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To the symbolic and the imaginary, Lacan adds the category of the Real, something he reformulated at several moment in his work. In 1953, ''the real is simply that which isn't symbolized'', which is excluded from the symbolic. As Lacan says, the real "is that which resists symbolization absolutely." He calls ''the real, the symbolic and the imaginary the "three registers of human reality." Thus, what we ordinarily speak of as "reality" would best be defined as an amalgam of symbolic and imaginary: imaginary to the extent that we are situated in the specular register and the ego offers us rationalizations of our actions; and symbolic to the extent that most things around us have meaning. (Everyday objects are symbolized in the sense that they mean something, they have a signification. Sometimes an object loses its meaning. I look at an everyday object as if it is mysterious and uncanny.) ''The real would represent precisely what is excluded from our reality'', the margin of what is without [[meaning]] and which we fail to situate or explore.
=====EditThe Psychoanalytic Institution=====In 1953, Lacan, together with many colleagues, left the [[Société Parisienne de Psychanalyse]] ([[SPP]]) to form the new group, the [[Société Française de Psychanalyse]] ([[SFP]]). Lacan did not agree with the standardized form of practice which the [[SPP]] was doing its best to introduce. (Nor did Lacan see eye to eye with the [[SPP]] on the question of psychoanalytic training.) Leaving the [[SPP]] to form the [[SFP]] had the consequence, unknown to Lacan and his colleagues, of depriving them of membership of the [[International Psychoanalytical Association]], and, in the following years, a complex process of negotiation was to take place to determine the status of the new group. In his work of the early 1950s, Lacan saw the image as the central source of resistance in psychoanalytic treatment. ''The ego is made up of privileged images and the task of analysis is to dissolve them''. They must be integrated in speech and the symbolic network, rather than remaining stagnant and inert, blocking the dialectical progression of speech. (The initial step in analysis is to reveal not what the patient is saying, but from where they are speaking - to reveal where their imaginary alienation is situated. Understanding what someone is saying must come after this.)
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