Changes

The real, a category established by Jacques Lacan, can only be understood in connection with the categories of the symbolic and the imaginary.  It is not until 1953 that Lacan elevates the [[Real]] to the status of a fundamental category of psychoanalytic theory; the [[Real]] is henceforth one of the three [[orders]] according to which all psychoanalytic phenomena may be described, the other two being the [[Symbolic]] order and and the [[Imaginary]] order.  The [[Real]] is thus no longer simply opposed to the [[Imaginary]], but is also located beyond the [[Symbolic]].  The Real works in tension with the imaginary order and the symbolic order.  In 1953, in a lecture called "Le symbolique, l'imaginaire et le réel" (The symbolic, the imaginary, and the real; 1982), Lacan introduced the real as connected with the imaginary and the symbolic. ==Real and Freud== The [[real]] is located in [[dream]]s as its [[navel]]. The [[real]] is limit of the [[dream]], the point at which the unknown emerges. The [[dream]]'s [[navel]] is the point at which the [[real]] is linked with the [[symbolic]].<ref>Lacan, 1975</ref>  ==Real and Reality== The [[real]] is not simply synonymous with the [[external ]] [[reality]], nor . The [[real]] is it simply the antonym irreducible [[surplus]] of [[external]] [[reality]] that resists [[language]]. ==External / internal==The term 'imaginarythe [[teal]]'seems to imply a simplistic notion of an objective, external reality, a material substrate which exists in itself, independently of any observer.It exists ouside or beyond such a 'naive' view of the [[Real]] is subverted by the fact that the [[symbolicReal]] also includes such things as hallucinations and traumatic dreams.  The [[Real]], is menacingly homogeneousthus both inside and outside.<ref>S7, 118; see [[extimacy]]</ref> (extimitÈ).  This ambiguity reflects the ambiguity inherent in Freud's own use of the two German terms for reality (Wirklichkeit and Realit‰t) and the distinction Freud draws between material reality and psychical reality.<ref>Freud, 1900a: SE V, 620</ref> the [[Real]] is not composed placed firmly on the side of distinct the unknowable and differential unassimilable, while 'reality' denotes subjective representations which are a product of [[signifierSymbolic]]and [[Imaginary]] articulations (Freud's'psychical reality').  ==Real and Materiality== The [[real]] is described also has connotations of matter, implying a material substrate underlying the [[imaginary]] and the [[symbolic]]. The connotations of matter also link the concept of the [[Real]] to the realm of [[biology]] and to the body in its brute physicality (as tht which resists opposed to the [[symbolizationImaginary]] and [[significationSymbolic]] functions of the body).  For example the [[real]]father is the biological father, and the [[real]] phallus is usually encountered in the context of physical penis as opposed to the [[traumasymbolic]] and [[psychosisimaginary]]functions of this organ.IfThe real for example continues to erupt whenever we are made to acknowledge the materiality of our existence, for instancean acknowledgement that is usually perceived as traumatic (since it threatens our very "reality"), although it also drives Lacan's sense of jouissance.  ==Real and Imaginary== At first the [[nameReal]] is simply opposed to the realm of the image, which seems to locate it in the realm of being, beyond appearances.<ref>{{Ec}} p.85</ref>  ==Real and Pre-Oedipal== The state ofnature from which we have been forever severed by our entrance into language.  Only as neo-natal children were we close to this state of nature, a state in which there is nothing but need.  A baby needs and seeks to satisfy those needs with no sense for any separation between itself and the external world or the world of others.  For this reason, Lacan sometimes represents this state of nature as a time of fullness or completeness that is subsequently lost through the entrance into language.   ==Real and Symbolic== The [[real]] exists '[[outside]]' or 'beyond' the-father[[symbolic]]. The [[real]] is that which resists [[symbolization]] and [[signification]] . Defined as what escapes the symbolic, the real can be neither spoken nor written.  Thus it is related to the impossible, defined as "that which never ceases to write itself."  And because it cannot be itnegrated reduced to meaning, the real does not lend itself any more readily to univocal imaginary representation than it does to symbolization.    As far as humans are concerned, however, "the real is impossible," as Lacan was fond of saying.  It is impossible in so far as we cannot express it in language because the very entrance into language marks our irrevocable separation from the real.  Still, the real continues to exert its influence throughout our adult lives since it is the rock against which all our fantasies and linguistic structures ultimately fail.  Thus, whatever our capacity for symbolizing and imagining, there remains an irreducible realm of the nonmeaning, and that is where the real is located (see Lacan, 1974-1975).  ==Real and the Lack in the Symbolic== The [[subjectreal]] is not [[outside]]'s of the [[symbolic]] worldbut is a [[structure]] feature of it - its [[lack]].  ==Real and the Subject== "One thing that is striking is that in analysis there is an entire element of the real of the subject that escapes us. There is something that brings the limits of analysis into play, and it involves the mechanism relation of the subject to the real."<ref>1982</ref> The real is defined not solely by its relation to the symbolic but also by the particular way in which each subject is caught up in it. Unlike the [[foreclosureSymbolic]] will ensure , which is constituted in terms of oppositions such as that it between presence and absence, 'there is expelled into no absence in the [[Real]].' <ref>S2, 313</ref>  Whereas the [[realSymbolic]] opposition between presence and not repressed into absence implies the permanent possibility that something may be missing from the [[unconsciousSymbolic]]order, thus triggering a the [[psychosisReal]]'is always in its place: it carries it glued to its heel, ignorant of what might exile it from there.' <ref>Ec, 25; see Sll, 49</ref> The foreclosed Whereas the [[Symbolic]] is a set of differentiated, discrete elements called signifiers, the [[signifierReal]] will then return is, in itself, undifferentiated; 'the [[realReal]] in is absolutely without fissure.' <ref>S2, 97</ref>  It is the form of a persecutory [[imageSymbolic]] that cannot be which introduces 'a cut in the [[mastery|masteredReal]] through verbal ' in the process of signification: 'it is the world of words that creates the world of things - things originally confused in the hic et nunc of the all in the process of coming-into-being.' <ref>E, 65</ref> In these formulations of the period 1953-5, the [[symbolizationReal]]emerges as that which is outside language and inassimilable to symbolisation.

In 1953, in a lecture called "Le symbolique, lThe [[Real]] is 'imaginaire et le réel" (The symbolic, the imaginary, and the real; 1982), Lacan introduced the real as connected with the imaginary and the symbolic. The realimpossible'<ref>Sl l, insofar as 167</ref> because it is situated in relation impossible to the death drive and the repetition compulsionimagine, has nothing impossible to do with Freudian reality (Wirklichkeit) or with integrate into the reality principle. Lacan wrote, "One thing that is striking is that in analysis there is an entire element of the real of the subject that escapes us. . . . There is something that brings the limits of analysis into play[[Symbolic]] order, and it involves the relation of the subject impossible to the real" (1982). Right away, Lacan raised the question of the real attain in relation to analytic training, and in 1953 more specifically in relation to the choice of candidates for training analysis. The issue concerned the fact that the real is defined not solely by its relation to the symbolic but also by the particular any way in which each subject is caught up in it.

Lacan was able to extract It is this notion character of the real from his meticulous reading impossibility and of Freud. In La relation d'objet (Object relations; 1994), his seminar of 1956-1957, Lacan, taking up the case of "little Hans" (Freud, 1909b), explained the boy's mythical constructions as a response resistance to symbolisation which lends the real of sexual jouissance (enjoyment) that had erupted in his field of subjectivity. Thanks to his imaginary constructions and his phobia, little Hans avoided the issue of castration. In his seminar The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-1955 (1988), Lacan presented a detailed reading of Freud's dream of Irma's injection (Freud, 1900a). He emphasized that the terrifying image that Freud saw at the back of Irma's throat revealed the irreducible real and designated a limit point at which "all words cease" (1988, p. 164)[[Real]] its essentially traumatic quality.

The concept of the [[real also allowed Lacan to approach questions of anxiety and the symptom in a new way. While his early teaching was devoted to the primacy of the symbolic, in later seminars (from 1972 to 1978) he argued that the real (R), the symbolic (S), and the imaginary (I) are strictly equivalent. In effect, the symbolism that Lacan borrowed from logic failed to formalize the real, which "never ceases to write itself." Thus Lacan attempted, by borrowing from the mathematics of knot theory, to invent a formulation independent of symbols. By affirming the equivalence of the three categories R, S, and I, by representing them as three perfectly identical circles that could be distinguished only by the names they were given, and by knotting these three circles together in specific ways (such that if any one of them ]] is cut, the other two are set free), Lacan introduced a new object in psychoanalysis, the Borromean knot. This knot is both a material object that can be manipulated and a metaphor for the structure of the subject. The knot, made up of three rings, is characterized by how the rings (representing the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary) interlock and support each other. From this point on encountered in Lacan's teaching, the real was no longer an opaque and terrifying unconceptualizable entity. Rather, it is positioned right alongside the symbolic and tied to it by mediation of the imaginary. Thus, whatever our capacity for symbolizing and imagining, there remains an irreducible realm context of the nonmeaning, and that is where the real is located (see Lacan, 1974-1975)[[trauma]].

In the final years his seminar The Four Fundamental Concepts of his teachingPsychoanalysis (1978), Lacan took up the question of the symptom and the end of the treatment (1975; 1976). If the symptom is "the most real thing" that subjects possess (1976, p. 41), then how must analysis proceed to aim at the real of the symptom in order to ensure that the symptom does not proliferate in meaningful effects and even to eliminate the symptom? For analysis not to be an infinite process, for it to find its own internal limit, the analystFreud's interpretation, which bears upon the signifier, must also reach the real of the symptom, that is, the point where the symbolically nonmeaningful latches on to the real, where the first signifiers heard by Beyond the subject have left their imprint Pleasure Principle (Lacan, 1985, p. 141920g). According to Lacan, to reach its endpoint, an analysis must modify the relationship of the subject to and approached the real, which is an irreducible whole in the symbolic from which the subject's fantasy terms of compulsion and desire deriverepetition.

This notion He proposed distinguishing between two different aspects of the real has given rise to numerous misunderstandings. Some have interpreted its resistance to formalization as repetition: a slide into irrationality. Others, by identifying symbolic aspect that depends on the real with trauma, have made it a cause compulsion of fear signifiers (automaton) and anxiety. Yet we all have an intuitive experience of the a real in such phenomena as the uncanny, anxiety, the nonmeaningful, and poetic humor aspect that plays upon words at the expense of meaning. Thushe called tuché, when the framework interruption of the imaginary wavers and speech is lacking, when reality is no longer organized and pacified automaton by the fantasy screen, the experience of the real emerges in trauma or a way bad encounter that the subject is unique for each personunable to avoid.

==Definition==Lacan's use Engendered by the real of the term '[[Real]]' (rÈel) as a substantive dates back to an early paper, published in 1936. The term was popular among certain philosophers at the timetrauma, and repetition is the focus of a work perpetuated by Emile Meyerson.<ref> (which Lacan refers to in the 1936 paper; Ec, 86</ref> Meyerson defines the [[Real]] as 'an ontological absolute, a true being-in-itself'.<ref>Meyerson, 1925: 79; quoted in Roustang, 1986: 61</ref> In speaking of 'the [[Real]]', then, Lacan is following a common practice in one strand failure of early twentieth-century philosophy. However, while this may be Lacan's starting point, the term undergoes many shifts in meaning and usage throughout his worksymbolization.

At first From this point on, Lacan defined the [[Real]] is simply opposed real as "that which always returns to the realm of the imagesame place" (Lacan, which seems to locate it in the realm of being1978, beyond appearancesp.<ref>Ec, 85</ref> However, the fact that even at this early point Lacan distinguishes between the [[Real]] and 'the true' indicates that the [[Real]] is already prey to a certain ambiguity49).<ref>Ec, 75</ref>

After appearing in 1936Trauma, the term disappears from Lacan's work until the early 1950s, when Lacan invokes Hegel's view that 'everything which is [[Real]] is rational (and vice versa)' (Ec, 226). It is not until 1953 that Lacan elevates Freud situated within the [[Real]] to the status framework of a fundamental category of psychoanalytic theory; the [[Real]] is henceforth one of the three [[orders]] according to which all psychoanalytic phenomena may be describeddeath drive, the other two being the [[Symbolic]] order and and the [[Imaginary]] order. The [[Real]] is thus no longer simply opposed to the [[Imaginary]], but is also located beyond the [[Symbolic]]. Unlike the [[Symbolic]], which is constituted in terms of oppositions such Lacan conceptualized as that between presence and absence, 'there is no absence in the [[Real]].'<ref>S2, 313</ref> Whereas the [[Symbolic]] opposition between presence and absence implies the permanent possibility that something may be missing from the [[Symbolic]] order, the [[Real]] 'is always in its place: it carries it glued impossible-to its heel, ignorant of what might exile it from there-symbolize real.'<ref>Ec, 25; see Sll, 49</ref>

Whereas Thus in his reading of the [[Symbolic]] is a set case of differentiated, discrete elements called signifiers, the [[Real]] is, in itself, undifferentiated; 'the [[Real]] is absolutely without fissure.'Little Hans <ref>S2Freud, 971909b</ref> It is in the seminar of 1956-7, Lacan distinguishes two [[SymbolicReal]] elements which introduces intrude and disrupt the child'a cut in the s [[RealImaginary]]' in the process of significationpreoedipal harmony: 'it is the world of words that creates the world of things - things originally confused in the hic et nunc of the all in the process of coming-into-being.'<ref>ES4, 65308-9</ref>

The [[Real]] also has connotations of matter, implying a material substrate underlying the [[Imaginary]] and the [[Symbolic]] (see [[Materialism]]). The connotations of matter also link the concept of the [[Real]] to the realm of [[biology]] and to the body in its brute physicality (as opposed to the [[Imaginary]] and [[Symbolic]] functions of the body). For example the [[Real]] father is the biological father, and the [[Real]] phallus is the physical penis as opposed to the [[SymbolicAnxiety]] and [[Imaginary]] functions of this organ.trauma

The preceding comments trace out some of the main uses to which Lacan puts the category of the [[Real]], but are far from covering all the complexities of this term.   ==Real and Psychoanalytic Treatment==The concept of the real also allowed Lacan to approach questions of anxiety and the symptom in a new way.  In factthe final years of his teaching, Lacan takes pains took up the question of the symptom and the end of the treatment (1975; 1976).  If the symptom is "the most real thing" that subjects possess (1976, p. 41), then how must analysis proceed to aim at the real of the symptom in order to ensure that the [[Real]] remains symptom does not proliferate in meaningful effects and even to eliminate the symptom?  For analysis not to be an infinite process, for it to find its own internal limit, the analyst's interpretation, which bears upon the signifier, must also reach the most elusive and mysterious real of the three orderssymptom, that is, the point where the symbolically nonmeaningful latches on to the real, where the first signifiers heard by speaking the subject have left their imprint (Lacan, 1985, p. 14).  According to Lacan, to reach its endpoint, an analysis must modify the relationship of it less than the subject to the real, which is an irreducible whole in the symbolic from which the subject's fantasy and desire derive.                                                                                                                            BORROMEAN KNOTBy affirming the equivalence of the other ordersthree categories R, S, and I, by representing them as three perfectly identical circles that could be distinguished only by making it the site names they were given, and by knotting these three circles together in specific ways (such that if any one of them is cut, the other two are set free), Lacan introduced a radical indeterminacynew object in psychoanalysis, the Borromean knot. Thus it  This knot is never completely clear whether both a material object that can be manipulated and a metaphor for the structure of the [[Real]] subject.  The knot, made up of three rings, is external or internalcharacterized by how the rings (representing the real, the symbolic, or whether it is unknowable or amenable to reasonand the imaginary) interlock and support each other.