Changes

In our "[[society of the spectacle]]", in which what we experience as everyday reality more and more takes the form of the [[lie]] made real, [[Freud]]’s insights show their true value. Consider the interactive computer [[games]] some of us play [[compulsive]]ly, games which enable a [[neurotic]] weakling to adopt the screen persona of a macho [[aggressivity|aggressor]], beating up other [[men]] and [[violence|violently]] enjoying [[women]]. It’s all too easy to assume that this weakling takes refuge in [[cyberspace]] in order to escape from a dull, [[impotence|impotent]] [[reality]]. But perhaps the games are more telling than that. What if, in playing them, I articulate the [[perversion|perverse]] core of my [[personality]] which, because of [[ethics|ethico]]-[[social norms|social constraints]], I am not able to act out in real life? Isn’t my [[virtual]] persona in a way "[[more real than reality]]"? Isn’t it precisely because I am aware that this is 'just a game' that in it I can do what I would never be able to in the real world? In this precise sense, as [[Lacan]] put it, [[the Truth has the structure of a fiction]]: what appears in the guise of dreaming, or even daydreaming, is sometimes the [[truth]] on whose [[repression]] [[social reality]] itself is founded. Therein resides the ultimate lesson of ''[[The Interpretation of Dreams]]'': [[reality]] is for those who cannot sustain the [[dream]].