Lacan’s ‘The Real’
Notes and summaries on the theories of Jacques Lacan
Lacan’s The Real.
The imaginary and the symbolic form reality together, which is opposed to the real, reality is almost the polar opposite of the real. The Real is beyond what we imagine existing The language by which you represent things and your belief in the stability of ordinary reality. It is the reason that we do not know why we do some things, even ourselves not knowing why we act certain ways.
Reality is built up by language, symbols that form meaning, this is where we find the construct of the ideal “I” that is the self, that you imagine yourself to be. Also where you represent others, actual or imaginary. Reality is a fiction that protects you from the real. It is an abyss of meaning, beyond significance. It is the cause of the endless loop of desire, meaning we will never be happy or complete regardless of how hard we try.
You cannot think about the real. It is impossible to think about. There is nothing to think about. A lack of an object. Desire, and your attempts to achieve desire orbits the real, affecting the things you do without consciously thinking about it. The real is experienced constantly, we just avoid it as we cannot function in meaninglessness. This is not nihilistic or depressive, there is nothing worth doing over others, nothing at all is significant.
Lacan developed the idea of a less than nothing something but nothing. You can encounter the real only when it ruptures reality, between perception and the consciousness of that perception. The real is senseless and an analogy of this could be trauma. The rest of the world seems abnormal post-trauma, people do not truly understand the feeling of the trauma and the victim does not see the world in the same way. Suddenly the world is reduced to nothing, you are left post-trauma with said trauma causing the collapse of reality. The Real is this distance being full. A full dissolution of all meaning. Rape, being one of the worst traumas one can experience, the trauma is worse than the event and the violence of the event. The trauma of rape is that the idea of control and self-determination is completely destroyed. These events destroy your whole life’s narrative. You then carry these traumas for the rest of your life, over time, thankfully, a lot of people manage to piece their new reality into shape, but it will always be doubted and your belief in it will be less than before. The events are not real, but they cause you to experience a lesser version of the real as a breakdown of all meaning in your reality. Your whole psyche is based on not experiencing the real.
To experience the real is for the world to fall apart. Every subject knows the real, not in conscious thought, but subconsciously, you fear that everything you have built up can be broken. This differs from mainstream psychologists. Peterson’s 12 steps to happiness are incorrect in a psychoanalytical view. To be yourself is not what Lacan says we strive for. Lacan believes there is no such thing as “yourself”. You do not want to find your true self- there might be nothing there. Functional life is spent not being yourself in the least neurotic way. We are all here doing insignificant tasks on an insignificant rock. Even cynically aware of this cosmic insignificance, people do not live like this is the case. Two forms of belief: mental assent, saying your life doesn’t matter, the belief is then acting this out. One is clearly a part of the imaginary or symbolic. The other is far deeper. You can never understand why you do this. Your true self does not exist. We are prevented, by the psyche, from realizing that we are insignificant and purposeless. We see our purposefulness blocked by the reality made up of symbolism and the imaginary. The gap between the ideal “I” and the actual way you are perceived, by yourself, by others, and by the big other.
The imaginary. How do you compare you, to your ideal “I”? That deferral is where the abyss of the real opens. Despite how honest and self-conscious you are. You cannot fully own up to your neurosis. Especially during social situations, around others. It is ridiculous to not pretend you are that persona, with interesting interests. You still hold an imaginary image of who you think you are. Your imaginary self is relatively complete and worthy of your desires. You yourself, believe in the fictional person you present. Either believe it is you, or it could be you. Even when in private, the big other serves to exist. You justify yourself, to the big other, you are alone, but you believe in the big other and hold up your image of the imaginary “I” which you believe yourself to be perceived as. We need to justify ourselves at all times, we create an image of the big other to justify us justifying our fictional ideal “I”.
You project blame onto others that you see as shallow in order to expose them out of your own fear. Except the fear is not of being exposed, but of yourself realising The Real. Realizing there is nothing to you internally no meaning. The subconscious defends the real. The difference here from psychology is that psychology aims to make you happier, make you ok about yourself. Lacan goes much further, first the mask you present, you know it is a lie. A second mask, what you present yourself, to yourself. Even through anxiety and self-doubt, you hold a belief in your own value, you must be worthy of criticizing yourself even though not worthy of desire. Now, the real make even these feelings seem farcical. If this happens too much, you blow up your significance and become a narcissist. Narcissism is a subconscious defense that comes from this, narcissism is simply a learned defense against the real. Even when we have experienced the real, post a traumatic event. We cannot communicate the experience, in the same way, a mind-altering experience on psychedelics cannot be described.
Except Lacan goes far beyond, not only are the victims of trauma living with the experience of the real, but living itself is healing the trauma of the real. The trauma of the real is existing in every person’s subconscious. This “lack” hiding under every fiction that we construct is something we all know but you don’t remember that you know it. A lost knowledge you have. A knowledge that exists separate from the world around us. Psychoanalysis truly proves that one and two are just mirages. The real cannot be expressed in language but this lack of meaning can be experienced in the form of trauma.
Lacan speaks on one of Freud’s patients: ‘Is it not remarkable that, at the origin of the analytic experience, the Real should have presented itself in the form that which is unassimilable in it- in the form of trauma’. Survivors of the rupture may be able to narrate or describe their experience in the form of a meaningful event. To make sense of them, however, means that the “world has been placed back on its feet”. Once the real is described, it no longer exists as the Real.
Lacanian “Objet a”
As a subject, you can never be satisfied with subjectivity alone, desire and the object of desire exists as something that is always in us, and always points us outside, to try and fill a hole in order to be yourself. You will never not be desiring. Like a carrot on a stick, an item that changes form with no control. This means you are never really yourself, but are carrying around a desire-shaped hole, always.
To be a subject is to be constantly imagining yourself more satisfied with something that you don’t now have. You imagine yourself with things you may not have control over. This desire always points outside, causing a loop Lacan called “Neurosis”. When celebrities kill themselves people ask, “what is it they dont have?’’ There is always something more to want. And when they are seen as someone who has all desire filled. You can never be yourself and this realisation can cause suicide when realised in the real world.
Lacanian Imaginary Register
There is a constant message, in kids movies, advertising, music. To “Be yourself”. It is common knowledge that the media spectacle is controlling for the mind. People on social media try to exhibit how good they are, at being themselves. Within visual social media, you have to appeal to visual form, beauty, fashion, lifestyle summarise the most popular influencers on Instagram for example. Are exhibit your life, wealth, bodily image. These in turn become the projection of the “objet a” of the people who see them (the influenced). In Lacanian psychoanalysis. This is called “the imaginary”.
There are 3 registers of experience in Lacanian psychoanalysis, the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real. It is not called the imaginary because it is made up. But because it is image-based, for example, dreams are made up of images. The symbolic, one layer of symbolism, we see images, language and see the symbolism behind them. And the real, is the abstract void, the unmediated thought that we spend our whole life avoiding, as it removes all meaning from our mind. The real, as usual, will be avoided here.
The imaginary is image-based, you can see these words on this page. The function of influencers in our media ecology is to create the imaginary, which will of course be made available to purchase. How we respond to desire is clarified here. We project our future self, the ideal “i” as someone we want to be seen, influencers and celebrities affect this ideal “I” we aim to be. But it is fictional, and it is as fictional as the imaginary that we see others through. We create the Ideal “I” in the world of images we see. In the realm of the imaginary. For example, singing in front of a mirror, the fictions of the imaginary, the crowd, aligns with the fiction of the imaginary “I”.
Lacanian Mirror Stage
The mirror stage is a point in a toddler’s growth where you recognise yourself in the mirror. According to Lacan, this is the stem of all anxiety. Something happens for the first time in this mirror stage. You see yourself as an object, externally. Objects do not desire, you see yourself internally opposed to this, as not an object. Subjects are constituted by desire for other objects. You are desiring, therefore not an object. The need for desire proves, the exterior is needed to be you and this can never be reached. This fundamental, misrecognition, that you will be stuck in from then on.
Prior to the Mirror Stage, you are shown many sensory elements, voice your hands etc. but none of them condense into a single unity, until the image-based unity is seen in the mirror stage, when we see a solid outline of ourselves and define the inside and the outside of our bodies. An imaginary, image-based unity, we see ourselves as “inside and outside” “subject and object”.
Desire for objects, desire can be transferred onto an object before we even acquire language. But when we learn the word “I” we put I alongside all other items, ball, bottle, I. Just like any other objects. But man is not fixed like these items, because desire is a part of you, and always outside of you. The I that you say, can never truly signify your ideal “I”. Now into the symbolic realm, your I represents something deeper. Because you are a subject, you are never yourself, purely by yourself. You desire being yourself anyway, although it is impossible.
The notion of a stable ego supposes a fixed consciousness from which social arrangements occur, Lacan holds out individual subjectivity. There is not an independent subject that can be truly signified. This form (the ideal “I” in the mirror) situates the agency of the ego before its social determination and situates it as fictional which will always remain irreversible and even irreducible for the individual.
The Gaze, The Big Other.
The fictional image of the “I” is then chased for the rest of the life. Your identity is not complete and whole, but exists within and without in the form of desire. Influencers are seen as objects in the same way. In turning themselves into objects, they need to pretend to be complete. Desiring to be seen, is desiring to be complete because he becomes an object in another’s eyes. Forms are complete, one thing, not like beings.
The function of the gaze is to construct yourself as if somebody is looking at you from the outside. The gaze of others is a projection. Another attempt to turn yourself into one complete, internal thing. For others to see us is a way of existing and therefore being complete, but this desire to be seen originates in you because you do not experience others desires.
Social Media. Being seen is quantified in likes and views, you are never really seen because the desire is in you, the imaginary entity of the imaginary other. If not, why would social media not be quite you. Because it does not have a desire, the social media page is an object and therefore is an online image of you. You try to make it the you that you try to be, you try to be seen as desirable of others and the big other, the imaginary crowd.
It is the lack of completeness which event makes us seek this desire. We want from other subjects a missing absence that fills your missing absence. The gaze of no one, in particular, the imaginary crowd. Everyone tries to recreate the gaze they see on others, this is why desire is constantly orbiting. The central lack of subjectivity itself is desire, a problem without a solution that people buy into and can be profited off. Crafting a lifestyle based on the desires of others, and your own superficial desires, are some of the most unlikely ways to bring about completeness, even as completeness is completely impossible, this is just a method of achieving because it is profitable.
