Changes

[[Freud]] has often been accused of a [[chance|crude determinism]], since no slip or blunder, no matter how apparently insignificant, is ever ascribed to [[chance]].  Indeed, [[Freud]] wrote, "I believe in external (real) chance, it is true, but not in internal (psychical) accidental events."<ref>{{F}} ''[[Works of Sigmund Freud|The Psychopathology of Everyday Life]]'', 1901. [[SE]] VI. p. 257</ref>

[[Lacan]] expresses the same [[belief]] in his own terms: [[chance]], in the sense of pure [[time|contingency]], only [[exists]] in the [[real]].  In the [[symbolic]] [[order]], there is no such thing as pure [[chance]].

In the seminar of 1964, [[Lacan]] uses [[Aristotle]]'s distinction between two kinds of [[chance]] to illustrate this distinction between the [[real]] and the [[symbolic]].  In the second book of the ''Physics'', where the concept of [[causality]] is discussed, [[Aristotle]] explores the role of [[chance]] and [[chance|fortune]] in [[causality]].

[[Lacan]] redefines ''[[automaton]]'' as "the network of signifiers", thus locating it in the [[symbolic order]].  The term thus comes to designate those phenomena which seem to be [[chance]] but which are in truth the [[repetition|insistence]] of the [[signifier]] in determining the [[subject]].  ''[[Automaton]]'' is not truly arbitrary: only the [[real]] is truly arbitrary, since "the real is beyond the ''automaton''."<ref>{{S11}} p. 59</ref>

The [[real]] is aligned with ''[[tyche]]'', which [[Lacan]] redefines as "the encounter with the real".  ''[[Tyche]]'' thus refers to the incursion of the [[real]] into the [[symbolic]] [[order]]: unlike the ''[[automaton]]'', which is the [[structure]] of the [[symbolic order]] which determines the [[subject]], ''[[tyche]]'' is purely arbitrary, beyond the determinations of the [[symbolic]] [[order]].

It is a knock on the door that interrupts a [[dream]], and on a more painful level it is [[trauma]].  The [[trauma]]tic [[event]] is the encounter with the [[real]], extrinsic to [[signification]].