The Real

In depth psychology

Main article: Praxis (process), Limit-experience, Transparent eyeball, Overview effect, Anamorphosis

The Real is the intelligible form of the horizon of truth of the field-of-objects that has been disclosed.{{cite book |author-link=Maurice Merleau-Ponty |orig-year=1945 |author-link=Jacques Lacan |translator-last=Fink |translator-first=Bruce |translator-link1=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst) |orig-date=1966 | access-date = 2022-01-16 |author-link=Paul Ricoeur |translator-last=Savage |translator-first=Denis |author-link=Eugene Thacker | access-date = 2022-01-16 |editor-last1=Smith |editor-first1=Joseph H. |editor-last2=Kerrigan |editor-first2=William | access-date = 2022-01-17 | access-date = 2022-01-22 | access-date = 2022-03-18 | access-date = 2022-12-11

Jacques Lacan defines the Real as a plenum, a nature beyond culture that is contradistinct from the ontic.{{cite book |editor-last1=Smith |editor-first1=Joseph H. | access-date = 2022-01-17 |doi-broken-date=12 July 2025 |author-link=Jacques Lacan |translator-last=Fink |translator-first=Bruce |translator-link1=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst) |orig-date=1966

Thing-ness

Main article: Thing theory

Felluga states that Bill Brown's Thing is conceptually close to the Real, as it is a type of unreliableness of the relation between subject and object that is neither subject nor object.{{cite book

|editor-last1=Gurewich |editor-first1=Judith

Discourse of the subject

Main article: Four discourses, Discourse analysis

A master signifier (S1) organizes narrative (S2): a defensive form of discourse that is an ideological reaction to the Real: i.e., mythic explanation, hero's journey, storytelling, theme, pathos, ethos, plot, conflict, closure.{{refn|{{cite book |author-link=Ian Parker (psychologist) |author-link=Northrop Frye |orig-year=1957 |author-link=Guy Debord |translator-last1=Knabb |translator-first1=Ken |orig-year=1967 | access-date = 17 May 2021 | access-date = 2022-02-13 | access-date= 2022-02-13 | access-date = 2022-02-13 |translator-last1=Hurley |translator-first1=Robert |translator-last2=Seem |translator-first2=Mark |translator-last3=Lane R. |translator-first3=Helen |orig-date=1965 |translator-last1=Bains |translator-first1=Paul |translator-last2=Pefanis |translator-first2=Julian |orig-date=1992 |orig-year=2011 |author-link=Karen Horney

Psychotic discourse

Main article: Paranoia

Felluga states that Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's term antagonism, as a societal limit that sits outside of society's articulation, functions similarly to the Real.{{cite book

|author-link=Ian Parker (psychologist)

Hurst states that, in principle, self-analysis (analyst's discourse) might prevent an analyst from retrogressing to the ideological position of the master's discourse (i.e., King in The Purloined Letter).{{cite book

|author-link=Karen Horney |orig-year=1968

The phallic signifier and castration

Main article: Phallus#Psychoanalysis

The ineffable, unary signifier of lack (phallus) stitches the unconscious drives to jouissance, dialectically bridging language and desire (logos and eros, the Apollonian and the Dionysian).{{refn|{{cite book |editor-last1=Gurewich |editor-first1=Judith |editor-last1=Smith |editor-first1=Joseph H. |editor-last2=Kerrigan |editor-first2=William |author-link=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst) | access-date = 2022-06-25 |editor-last1=Glowinski |editor-first1=Huguette |editor-last2=Marks |editor-first2=Zita M. |editor-last3=Murphy |editor-first3=Sara |editor-last1=Glowinski |editor-first1=Huguette |editor-last2=Marks |editor-first2=Zita M. |editor-last3=Murphy |editor-first3=Sara |author-link=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst)

Drives

Main article: Drive theory

Barthes reflects that the inner voice of the subject is structured in a triad of "Presence" (frustration) created by the maternal Other, "Intermittence" (castration anxiety) over the loss of the phallus as an imaginary object taken by the real father, and "Absence" (privation) that occurs from losing the phallus from the imaginary father; (symbolic desire separates from real need and becomes imaginary demand) (q.v., Lacan's graph of desire).{{cite book |author-link=Roland Barthes |translator-last1=Howard |translator-first1=Richard |orig-date=1977 |editor-last1=Glowinski |editor-first1=Huguette |editor-last2=Marks |editor-first2=Zita M. |editor-last3=Murphy |editor-first3=Sara | access-date = 2022-12-11 |editor-last1=Gurewich |editor-first1=Judith

In neurosis

Main article: Différance

Hurst argues that the Lacanian Real parallels Derrida's concept of différance.{{cite book |author-link= |translator-last1=Bains |translator-first1=Paul |translator-last2=Pefanis |translator-first2=Julian |orig-date=1992

Hysteric's discourse

Main article: Hysteria

The hysteric's discourse is driven by the Real, where object (a) is at an impossible-to-find truth.{{cite book |editor-last1=Glowinski |editor-first1=Huguette |editor-last2=Marks |editor-first2=Zita M. |editor-last3=Murphy |editor-first3=Sara |author-link=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst)

The three categories of hysteria – conversion hysteria, anxiety hysteria, and traumatic hysteria – have a basis in alienation, with an identification to those-without-the-phallus, and a self-sacrifice through displacement.{{cite book |editor-last1=Gurewich |editor-first1=Judith

Artistic discourse

Main article: Anxiety of influence

Artistic discourse is a pneuma of neurosis-psychosis hallucinatory hysteria, a poetic-real microcosm of the True-Real.{{cite book |author-link= |author-link= |translator-last1=Atkinson |translator-first1=Charles Francis

|translator-last1=Bains |translator-first1=Paul |translator-last2=Pefanis |translator-first2=Julian |orig-date=1992

|author-link=Friedrich Nietzsche |translator-last1=Kaufman |translator-first1=Walter |orig-date=1878

Signs of the real

Main article: Anxiety

| access-date = 2022-11-18 | url-access= subscription

Tuché is an Aristotelian-borrowed term to describe the traumatic encounter-kernel of the Real and automaton to describe the repetitive transference process of symbolizing the Real.{{cite book | access-date = 2022-12-11

| access-date = 2022-12-26

The Symbolic introduces "a cut in the Real" in the process of signification: "it is the world of words that creates the world of things." Thus the Real emerges as that which is outside language, making it "that which resists symbolization absolutely".{{cite journal | access-date = 2022-01-16 | access-date = 2022-01-17 | access-date = 2022-01-18 |author-link=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst)

Signifiers of this experience are Lacan's jouissance, Marx's theory of alienation, the numinous, psychological trauma, transcendence, the sublime or a fractured ideology; particularly, it can be a narrative that separates signifiers from conscious desire-quest (i.e., narcissistic injury).{{refn|{{cite book |author-link=Slavoj Žižek |author-link=Ian Parker (psychologist) |author-link=Noël Carroll | access-date = 2022-01-18 |editor-last1=Smith |editor-first1=Joseph H. | access-date = 2022-01-18 | access-date = 2022-01-17 | access-date = 2022-01-18 | url-access= subscription

|author-link=Jacques Lacan |translator-last=Fink |translator-first=Bruce |translator-link1=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst) |orig-date=1966 | access-date = 2022-01-16 | access-date = 2022-01-16

''Jouissance''

Main article: Jouissance

Julia Kristeva, particularly in her 1980 essay Powers of Horror, posits that the super-ego's abjection facilitates a subjective traumatic limit between subject and objects, with the Real, through ego-object loss and castration of surplus jouissance.{{refn|{{cite book |author-link=Julia Kristeva |editor-last1=Oliver |editor-first1=Kelly |orig-year=1989 | access-date = 2022-03-23 | access-date = 2022-03-23 |editor-last1=Smith |editor-first1=Joseph H. |editor-last2=Morris |editor-first2=Humphrey |author-link=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst) |author-link= |doi-broken-date=12 July 2025 | access-date = 2022-12-11 | access-date = 2022-12-11 |author-link=

|author-link=Hayao Kawai

Unreal vs Real(2)

Main article: Khôra

The unreal-unnameable organ called a lamella (or libido as a symbiotic, pre-Oedipal, pre-symbolic Real(1) before-signified-who-ness) is distinct from the Real(2) after-signifier-what-ness, which a subject experiences at the limits of the Imaginary and Symbolic.{{refn|{{cite book |orig-year=2008 |author-link=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst) |author-link=Jacques Lacan |translator-last=Fink |translator-first=Bruce |translator-link1=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst) |orig-date=1966 |editor-last1= Simons |editor-first1= Jon |translator-last1=Bains |translator-first1=Paul |translator-last2=Pefanis |translator-first2=Julian |orig-date=1992

| translator-last1= Wieland | translator-first1= Hoban

Somatization

Main article: Somatization

Malcolm Bowie interprets the Lacanian real as ineffable (i.e., uncanny).{{refn|{{cite journal | access-date = 2022-01-17 |orig-year=1976 |orig-date=2011

Historical materialism

Main article: Historical materialism

Fredric Jameson interprets Lacan's real through a Marxist-Hegelian lens as meaning "History itself", a narrative symptom of the event.{{cite journal | access-date = 2022-01-17

In afro-pessimism

Main article: Afro-pessimism (United States)

Marriott examines Fanon: white people's gaze and dehumanization of black people through objectification, creating a desire for the absent object-of-identity in marginalized individuals that is destroyed through racist signification.{{cite book | access-date = 2022-12-09 | access-date = 2022-12-09 |author-link=

''Sinthome''

Main article: Sinthome, Free association (psychology)

In practice, Lacanian psychoanalysis derives the event by gazing at the resistance and transference to identify the automaton mechanisms of the Thing (viz., foreclosure, repression, and disavowal) that are utilized to anamorphosically read where the signifiers are hiding the symptomatic objet petit (a), rendering the real subject.{{refn| | access-date = 2022-01-16 | access-date = 2022-01-16 | access-date = 2022-01-17 |orig-year=1959 |author-link=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst)

| access-date = 2022-12-11| url-access= subscription

Subject-as-metaphor

Main article: Will (philosophy), Condensation (psychology)

|translator-last1=Nicholson-Smith |translator-first1=Donald |orig-year=1974

| access-date = 2022-12-11| url-access= subscription

|translator-last1=Pellauer |translator-first1=David |orig-year=1983

The void is what the subject finds through interrogation of oneself. The subject existentially navigates an inward, metaphorical and vacuous desert or ocean, unguided by the psychoanalytic metaphor of God's "Original Presence".{{refn|{{cite book |editor-last1=Smith |editor-first1=Joseph H. |editor-last1=Campbell |editor-first1=Joseph | access-date =2022-02-10 |doi-broken-date=12 July 2025 |translator-last=Fink |translator-first=Bruce |translator-last=Savage |translator-first=Denis |editor-last1=Smith |editor-first1=Joseph H. | access-date = 2022-02-09 |orig-year=1957 |translator-last1=Hurley |translator-first1=Robert |translator-last2=Seem |translator-first2=Mark |translator-last3=Lane R. |translator-first3=Helen |orig-date=1965 |editor-last1=Smith |editor-first1=Joseph H. |editor-last2=Morris |editor-first2=Humphrey

Philosophers reveal the Real engulfing the ego in a comparatively unfamiliar and defamiliarizing space, and the subject's dystonic feelings of confrontation. The geographical self as described in human geography, or alternatively the "makanthropos" as described by Schopenhauer, feels Cartesian anxiety, a confusion of certainty in reason, from the experience of this formless void.{{refn|{{cite journal | access-date = 2022-02-09 | access-date = 2022-02-09 |author-link= |translator-last1=Atkinson |translator-first1=Charles Francis

Resistance

Main article: Resistance (psychoanalysis), Self-deception, Name of the Father

An impasse is the resistance between the real and the imaginary that affects the therapeutic alliance, wherein the client is at odds with the Transcendent Function of the therapist's mind as mediation to the Symbolic Order by way of the Signifier-as-God (i.e., discrepancy).{{refn|{{cite book |translator-last1=Bains |translator-first1=Paul |translator-last2=Pefanis |translator-first2=Julian |orig-date=1992 |orig-year=2008 |orig-year=1968

''Passe''

Main article: Gaze, Oceanic feeling, Other (philosophy), The Void (philosophy)

| access-date = 2022-11-18| url-access= subscription

Lacan gave the name passe to the analysand's dualistic experience of uncertainty, becoming eclipsed and challenged by a subjective confrontation, that gives way to a feeling of certainty with the Real, e.g. in the temptation of Christ or the desolation of saints; it is "the moment of crisis in a speaking cure in which all subjectivity, the last imaginary residue [of the ego], all self-love falls away" and is replaced by acceptance from the analyst.{{cite journal | access-date = 2022-05-15 |orig-year=1968 |editor-last1=Glowinski |editor-first1=Huguette |editor-last2=Marks |editor-first2=Zita M. |editor-last3=Murphy |editor-first3=Sara

|editor-last1=Smith |editor-first1=Joseph H. |editor-last2=Kerrigan |editor-first2=William |editor-last1=Gurewich |editor-first1=Judith

Michael Eigen states that a paradox of faith comes from subject-attacking-object (such as in Jung's Answer to Job).{{cite book |orig-year=1989 |editor-last1=Swartz-Salant |editor-first1=Nathan |editor-last2=Stein |editor-first2=Murray

|orig-year=1949

The becoming produced under therapy sessions can lead to an ineffable and oceanic experience of the Thing (White interpreting Bion, Eigen, Ogden);{{cite journal | access-date = 2022-08-23 | access-date = 2022-08-23

The real as one-ness

Main article: Speculative realism, Immanence

Lerner states that Spinoza's God may be interpreted as the real, with the attribute of Thought as the symbolic.{{cite book | orig-year=2023

|translator-last1=Howard |translator-first1=Richard

Interpretations of the Real

Main article: Foreclosure (psychoanalysis), Theory of mind

|editor-last1=Smith |editor-first1=Joseph H. |editor-last2=Morris |editor-first2=Humphrey |editor-last1=Glowinski |editor-first1=Huguette |editor-last2=Marks |editor-first2=Zita M. |editor-last3=Murphy |editor-first3=Sara |author-link=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst)

|author-link=

With Muller, psychosis has no word-thing symbolic mediation: figurative communications function as reified Real objects (e.g., projective identification and bizarre objects).{{refn|{{cite book |editor-last1=Smith |editor-first1=Joseph H. |editor-last2=Kerrigan |editor-first2=William |editor-last1=Muller |editor-first1=John |editor-last2=Brent |editor-first2=Joseph |orig-year=1989 |editor-last1=Neill |editor-first1=Calum |editor-last2=Hook |editor-first2=Derek |editor-last1=Glowinski |editor-first1=Huguette |editor-last2=Marks |editor-first2=Zita M. |editor-last3=Murphy |editor-first3=Sara |author-link=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst) | access-date = 2022-08-22 |orig-date=2011 |orig-year=1959 | access-date = 2022-06-28 |editor-last1=Glowinski |editor-first1=Huguette |editor-last2=Marks |editor-first2=Zita M. |editor-last3=Murphy |editor-first3=Sara

Leeb conjectures that Theodor W. Adorno's concept of the non-identical and Lacan's Real fall under immanent critique.{{cite journal | access-date = 2022-12-25

In schizoanalysis

Main article: Floating signifier, Desiring-production

|editor-last1=Curley |editor-first1=Edwin |translator-last1=Hurley |translator-first1=Robert |orig-year=1970

In critical overviews of the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the Real has been identified, particularly in readings of A Thousand Plateaus, as the plane of defamiliarized and deterritorialized empty signifiers that approach the uncanny valley, destroyed signs of an imploding gaze, and a-temporal semiotic black holes of faciality.{{refn|{{cite journal | access-date = 2022-01-22 |translator-last=Massumi |translator-first=Brian | access-date = 2022-01-22 | access-date = 2022-02-10 | access-date = 2022-02-10

Guattari, who throughout the development of his philosophy was critical of Lacan, wrote in the 1979 essay "Logos or Abstract Machines?" that: |translator-last=Adkins |translator-first=Taylor |orig-year=1979 |translator-last1=Bains |translator-first1=Paul |translator-last2=Pefanis |translator-first2=Julian |author-link= |orig-date=1992 |translator-last1=Nicholson-Smith |translator-first1=Donald |orig-year=1974

When the monad-soul finds inner stability, the autopoietic objet petit a does not lead to introjection (oral stage) nor projection (anal stage): this state is the body without organs, a virtuality of becoming within the plane of immanence.{{refn|{{cite book |author-link= | access-date = 2022-09-08 |translator-last=Massumi |translator-first=Brian

Modalities of the Real in Žižek

Main article: Aufheben, Mise en abyme

Slavoj Žižek divides the gist of the Lacanian Real into "three modalities":{{cite book |author-link=Jacques Lacan |translator-last=Fink |translator-first=Bruce |translator-link1=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst) |orig-date=1966 |translator-last1=Bains |translator-first1=Paul |translator-last2=Pefanis |translator-first2=Julian |orig-date=1992

• The "symbolic Real" (Phallus): signifier of signification, Lacan's impossible "Other of the Other"{{cite book

  • symbolic historicity (Clotho) perpetually quilting the chain of signifiers (Lachesis) with a new master signifier (Atropos); i.e., dialectically ideological narrative-punctuation (hermeneutic circle/monad): when kairos castrates the logos with the Real.{{refn|{{cite book |author-link=Slavoj Žižek |author-link=Jacques Lacan |translator-last=Fink |translator-first=Bruce |translator-link1=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst) |orig-date=1966 |editor-last1=Smith |editor-first1=Joseph H. |editor-last2=Kerrigan |editor-first2=William |author-link=Slavoj Žižek |author-link1=Martin Heidegger |translator-last1=Macquarrie |translator-first1=John |translator-last2=Robinson |translator-first2=Edward |orig-date=1962 |author-link1=Edward S. Casey |editor-last1=Smith |editor-first1=Joseph H. |editor-last2=Kerrigan |editor-first2=William |translator-last1=Bains |translator-first1=Paul |translator-last2=Pefanis |translator-first2=Julian |author-link=Félix Guattari |orig-date=1992 |author-link=Jacques Lacan |translator-last=Fink |translator-first=Bruce |translator-link1=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst) |orig-date=1966 |editor-last1= Simons |editor-first1= Jon

• The "imaginary Real" (Objet petit a): Lewis states that real-traces of each signifier are rendered intelligible through the no-image signified{{cite book

  • a parallax-ic ego-split, deriving an ego-ideal object (a '), creating a poetic-real mental image of horror and terror, deriving the uncanny: méconnaissance.{{refn|{{cite book |author-link=Slavoj Žižek |author-link=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst) | access-date = 2022-04-17 | access-date = 2022-05-25 | access-date = 2022-05-25

• The "real Real" (Event): a semiotic negative-image object (e.g., woodblock printing), neither symbolic signifier nor imaginary signified{{cite book |author-link=

  • a fissure of the Symbolic; an absence-of-absence (~~p);{{cite book |author-link=Ludwig Wittgenstein |translator-last1=Ogden |translator-first1=C.K. |orig-date=1922 |author-link=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst) |author-link=Slavoj Žižek |author-link=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst) |author-link=Albert Camus |translator-last1=O'Brien |translator-first1=Justin |orig-year=1955 |author-link=Julia Kristeva |editor-last1=Oliver |editor-first1=Kelly |orig-year=1989 |author-link1=Gilles Deleuze |author-link2=Félix Guattari |translator-last=Massumi |translator-first=Brian |translator-link1=Brian Massumi |author-link=Jacques Lacan |translator-last=Fink |translator-first=Bruce |translator-link1=Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst) |orig-date=1966 |author-link=Ernest Becker |author-link=Otto Rank |translator-last1=Atkinson |translator-first1=Charles Francis

Lewis states that the real-of-the-symbolic is the letter (referenced in Lacan's schemas), and the real-of-the-imaginary is objet petit a.{{cite book

Žižek cites, as literary examples of the Real which he identifies as "the primordial abyss which swallows everything, dissolving all identities", the eldritch experience of Pip in the ocean in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, regression and the repetition compulsion of characterological desire in death drive within Poe's Maelström,{{cite journal | access-date = 2022-05-15 |author-link=Nancy McWilliams |orig-date=2011 |author-link=Slavoj Žižek

Glyn Daly also provided a further elaboration of Žižek's three modalities through his pre-established examples from pop culture:

The real Real is the hard limit that functions as the horrifying Thing (the Alien, Medusa's head, maelstrom and so on) - a shattering force of negation. The symbolic Real refers to the anonymous symbols and codes (scientific formulae, digitalisation, empty signifiers...) that function in an indifferent manner as the abstract "texture" onto which, or out of which, reality is constituted. In The Matrix, for example, the symbolic Real is given expression at the point where Neo perceives "reality" in terms of the abstract streams of digital output. In the contemporary world, Žižek argues that it is capital itself that provides this essential backdrop to our reality and as such represents the symbolic Real of our age. With the "imaginary real" we have precisely the (unsustainable) dimension of fantasmatic excess-negation that is explored in Flatliners. This is why cyberspace is such an ambiguous imaginary realm.{{cite web |access-date=17 August 2012}}

Notable figures

• Louis Althusser
• Alain Badiou
• Georges Bataille
• Simone de Beauvoir
• Maurice Blanchot
• Ray Brassier
• Lorenzo Chiesa
• Sigmund Freud
• Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst)
• Heraclitus
• Julia Kristeva
• Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
• Jean Laplanche
• François Laruelle
• Serge Leclaire
• Jean-Luc Nancy
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Parmenides
• Jean-Bertrand Pontalis
• Otto Rank
• Naomi Schor
• Evelyn Underhill

Notes

References

1. (August 2013). "Lovecraft, Reality, and the Real: A Žižekian Approach". Hippocampus Press.