[Breaking glass] [The famously dorkish 'Wilhelm Scream'] [A low metallic pulse...] [A low metallic pulse rises...] [A low metallic pulse rises, reverberating, as a low, slow techno beat comes in...] Hey, all you split subjects. Welcome back to PlasticPills This will be your second dose of Lacan from me In the first video I discussed the mirror stage, the Imaginary and desire Now due to some requests and Since I picked up new skills since I made that video– here check this out Cool, right? Now, if you haven't checked that that video, pause this and go there first so that this one makes sense Here I'll throw it up, right... ...there This video is going to head down this way
to the Real It's definitely the most elusive of the three and the most difficult to explain Now Some of my videos take a light-hearted approach or an ironic distance from the position
I'm occupying on the topic And this one won't I don't think it'd really suit and I think you'll see why as it takes a lot of care to handle correctly And to be honest this was not an easy video to write because the Real isn't something... it's a not-something So let's get back to this triangle here These represent the three registers of psychical experience in Lacan's system For the sake of this video, let's do... this So the Imaginary and the Symbolic form reality together which is opposed to the Real Reality resists the Real In one sentence now: the Real is what's beyond what you imagine existing, the language by which you represent things and your belief in the stability of
everyday, ordinary reality And yet it does a lot more than that too For Lacan, it's also the reason so much of what you do can't be explained, even to yourself or by yourself It's why not even you know, why you do what you do That is your neuroses Okay now check this out Eh? Call me a liar, but you ain't gonna see that on any other theory channel. All right, let's go in on this We need this stable reality to function properly, represented by this plane Reality is codified, built up by language, images and other elements that form coherent
significations – that is, meaning This is where you find a construct of your ideal 'I' – that is, the self that you imagine yourself to be and it's also where you represent others, actual or imaginary Ultimately, reality is a fiction meant to protect you from the yawning chasm of the Real A singularity that haunts your day-to-day subjectivity The Real is an abyss of meaning It's beyond signification It's also the absent cause of that endless loop of desire that defines subjectivity from the mirror stage onward And, yeah, it means that we'll never be happy or complete no matter how hard we try The object of desire always eludes us Watch that other video for that Now, the first rule of the Real is that you can't talk about the Real Think of it like a psychic black hole, like a singularity Here's the analogy: as you approach it, like a black hole, the normal rules of reality break down and things behave differently Identities are torn apart and everything else orbits this black hole, even though the singularity itself is not properly an object It's the lack of an object that we only know by its effect on other things (That analogy turned out better than I thought) So, desire, and your attempts to get on in your life, orbits this non-object Still, it affects a lot of what you do, especially the things that you do that don't make logical sense: your neuroses, phobias, obsessions, fetishes and irrational anxieties about other people Too real! All that weird shit you do is propelled by your unconscious as they act out these sort of
defense mechanisms And yet, we experience the Real all the time, just always at a distance It's like a silent background, which haunts experience and we do our best to avoid it Now we avoid this nothing because we can't function in meaninglessness Because there wouldn't be anything worth doing or
not worth doing This is not at all to be confused with being depressed or a nihilistic outlook because even in those states there are things that are more worth doing than others The Real is one step beyond any type of worldview, where there is nothing that can bear any significance at all Not yourself and not the world If you have had an experience
or something resembling it This will start making sense to you a whole lot quicker. So, here's the plan ...here's the plan To get around this inexplicable-ness, I'm going to try to approach a definition twice over First by analogy the second by the Imaginary and then, third, we'll talk to Lacan himself and what he says about the Real So before you go on and say, 'oh, you're such a hack!' Wait, hold out, we're gonna get there in the
third part, okay? Talking about the real Real is impossible, as I said before. It's the hardest of the three registers and that's saying something, because Lacan himself is one of the hardest theorists to read in the first place So let's start Segment 1: an approach via an analogy Lacan discussed the real differently throughout
his career It started as something like the noumenal (Which comes from Kant, as a sort of object outside of the relations of experience and perception) But it gets most interesting in Lacan's seminars, where he develops it as this less-than-nothing
something-nothing The Four Fundamental concepts of Psychoanalysis is where I'm headed and it's the second most quoted of Lacan's work after Écrits So here's the Real as found in the Seminar Book XI Now you need an Imaginary and a Symbolic as screens that structure your psychic life in a managable way The Imaginary and the Symbolic shape how you imagine yourself and other people and how you codify your position and activity in the world What's worth doing? What's not worth doing? You can encounter the Real only somewhat, and only indirectly, when it ruptures or breaks reality This noumenal thing But almost all the time, the way you narrate yourself to yourself is wandering around up here So the best analogy for these ruptures of reality that we might experience are traumatic events These are events which cause the meaning of the world to temporarily fall apart The Real is senseless [Glass shattering]
Think of the sorts of events that cause PTSD Disasters, brutal violence, maybe abuse and perhaps, in a more positive or "sublime" dimension, psychedelic trips where you sort of dissolve the boundaries between yourself and the rest of the world What brings these events together is that trying to explain them to others – explaining how you feel – makes no sense No matter how understanding that
other person tries to be Also, they cause the rest of the world to make
no sense to you and may return as symptoms in behaviours that you don't have control over later on Think for example of an earthquake – like, an actual earthquake – that destroys your home and kills your whole family Your entire life was built around having a home
and a family You have a job for the sake of your home and family That's why you do what you do. It's what gave you guidance and purpose in your life In fact, it is you in every sense of the way that you've structured reality Then, out of nowhere and without warning, it's suddenly reduced to nothing That senselessness of your world collapsing there leaves you with the nonsense of being yourself Now, in this analogy – which is probably not great – the Real is not the event of the earthquake It's what you're left with now the earthquake has come and annihilated the structure of meaning in your life This analogy does leave something to be desired, because the collapse of reality is somewhat removed from you and it doesn't belong to you properly So what does it look like when this distance is completely collapsed and removed? Consider, as another example, rape which is probably the most profound trauma that you could experience Now the trauma of rape is more than the event and more than the violence of the event The reality that is ruptured there is that you are an independent person with agency, rights, dignity, control over your body and your life and the trauma of rape is that this reality of control and self-determination is utterly violated and destroyed Now traumas as events are disastrous and I don't want to downplay them but what Lacan points to in trauma is that these are the sorts of events that collapse your whole life narrative which is mostly, according to him, a very thoroughly constructed fiction, but you need that fiction Now the second point about traumas that correlate to the real is that you carry them around with you for the rest of your life and that's important You don't know what can trigger the memory of a trauma to recur but there's always a chance that it might Over time, most people, thankfully, can piece the world back together and the trauma can be reincorporated into a narrative which brings it back into reality Again, because it's signified mostly Reality will always be a little less stable afterwards Now, to be clear, it's not that these traumatic or sublime experiences are themselves the Real because the Real itself is empty Rather, these events cause the comfortable reality you are living in to break down so you're left with nothing but that chasm of the Real And, when that's all you have left, you're probably left sobbing in the fetal position Because there's nothing else you can really do In Lacan's view, your whole psyche is constructed around not letting you experience the Real What it means to be a Subject ($) is that you've lost something of yourself which is why you run around in life trying to fill it with relationships, career, fulfillment, or whatever else But what you're trying to get back, paradoxically, is something that you never had Remember that pre-mirror-stage you're already a fractured assemblage of drives and your
unity is only fictional So to experience the Real is to experience every fiction that you've built up as fiction and there every
safety net is pulled away And that's why the world falls apart until you can build it up again Now, every subject knows the Real and not consciously but somewhere deep down Because the Real is the object of a latent fear that everything might fall apart – that is, everything that you've been building up, starting with the mirror stage Here, this should start sounding very different from mainstream psychology Mainstream psychology is about getting yourself back to your 'normal' self, where you can function relatively well Any number of hacks, psychologists, gurus, Yogis... YouTubers will offer you advice on how to become
your true self as if you could get back to it, somehow Happiness – their definition is being true to yourself and they're telling you that you really are in there somewhere and the best way to get down to it is to follow their
12 rule plan [smugly]: (Doesn't look like that worked out) According to Lacan, you don't want to find your true self because there might not be anything there at the bottom A functional life is spent not being yourself
... in the least neurotic way possible Now, this might sound all kinda depressing but it kinda makes sense with what we know more explicitly and consciously, right? We are, basically, accidentally-conscious primates performing inconsequential tasks on an insignificant rock for an insignificant amount of time But, even if you're cynical about your importance from a cosmic perspective, virtually no one actually lives like that's the case, whether or not they say they believe it So there's two forms of belief here: One is giving mental assent, saying 'I know that my life doesn't really matter all that much in the long run' But then there's a form of belief where you actually act out the things that you say you believe Now one is definitely part of the Symbolic and the Imaginary and the other part is deeper than that Now, even if very well-put-together people say they don't believe life has meaning or purpose For example this VERY popular YouTube channel, which is much more popular than mine It says this: The School of Life: "Lacan is preparing us to face the darker possibility that in fact other people will be resolutely stuck on the outside of us..." "...assuming us to be pretty much as we seem but heavily caricaturing us without meaning to" "We're understandably reluctant to accept this loneliness and are consequently very concerned to control the external appearances that we present" "That's what the fashion industry trades on" "We hope that if we could tinker sufficiently with what other people see externally of us – perhaps our hair or the design of our collar – we may eventually be properly understood" PlasticPills: [groaning] Oh my God! That is such
a trash take 'All we really want is to be understood and that's what Lacan is saying' 'Lacan is just worried that we might feel misunderstood by other people.' [Groaning!] School of Life: "Lacan suggests a more difficult,
mature move:" "that we accept that other people simply won't ever experience us the way we experience ourselves" "That we will be almost entirely misunderstood and will, in turn, almost entirely misunderstand" Oh my God! This is so obnoxiously wrong! It's so wrong that you couldn't even make a case that Lacan ever said that Lacan is not a..... high school guidance counselor You can't understand anyone else Like, what what understand even mean in this context? Knowing why they do what they do? You can't even understand yourself, ever, and
the actual problem here... The actual problem is a truth that were way more afraid of – that there isn't anything there to be understood,
even if anyone cared enough to try What our psyches helped us with and what they prevent us from realizing (good guy psyches!) what they prevent us from experiencing is that reality is a facade repressing the suspicion that you don't have a purpose and that you're not significant. (That means you cannot be signified with anything meaningful) You can't live believing that, which is the function
of the ideal 'I' The ideal 'I' takes your place in reality almost all of the time and there's always this gap between
the ideal 'I' and you That gap is the reason why you have neuroses why some people are paranoiacs, narcissists or psychotics (Stay away from them.) These are all habits developed in dealing with the threat of the return of the Real Let's take a second pass of this via the Imaginary How do you compare you to your ideal 'I' and that deferral is where the abyss of the Real opens So you're not busy, right? Want to do some therapy? Even if you call yourself a self-aware person and no matter how honest you are with yourself You probably do your best to avoid owning up to your neuroses particularly in social interactions You must wear a mask around anyone that you care about People you want to date, people you want to impress, your parents, your social media friends (Eyy!) Now, most of the time it's ridiculous to not pretend that you are that persona Believe me, it's better for you With it's cool interests and productive habits ...and kick-ass YouTube videos Now, even if you know that you're not acting like yourself you still maintain a more private image of who you think you are Your Imaginary self is still something relatively complete, something significant, and something worthy of other people's love and desire Y'know, you're generally a good person who tries to do the right thing and when you don't you have a pretty good reason for why you didn't And, if anyone else took the time to figure that out, they would get you Now, even when you're alone with your Imaginary self It's not like a mask that you can just take off (that's way too simple) because you believe in that too - that fictional person You either believe that it is you or that it could be you if you took a little more time to work at it so even when you're alone what Lacan calls the big Other is watching you, even though it doesn't exist It's making sure that you exist for you and it makes sure that you give good reasons for why you're doing what you're doing Even without anyone else around, you justify yourself to another part of yourself. This is the Symbolic relation Now that's the Symbolic relation: when you're alone, you're not really alone But the Real is also in that relationship The reason the Symbolic process exists is to protect you from what you may sometimes suspect
deep in your soul Namely, that you disappear without the constant attention of other people That you are rather depraved or at least you continue to make the same mistakes over and over again and then justify it to yourself or that you vacillate between being
compulsive and lazy and yet pass judgment on everyone else for doing the same thing to make yourself feel better And finally that you project blame onto other people for why you are basically nothing like what you pretend to be: That you're maladjusted and afraid of being exposed and not just because that exposure would be uncomfortable But because that exposure would expose that there's nothing actually to you Shit, that Real enough? Don't worry, we're not even at the ground floor yet Now none of this yet differentiates ordinary psychology from Lacan's psychoanalysis Except that psychology thinks that you feeling bad is the problem and wants to fix that, through therapy or whatever else The goal is to make you okay with yourself, to give you a positive self-image, to help you stop thinking 'negative thoughts' and that's what most therapy – and some stupid YouTube channels – attempt to do Lacan goes much further and let's see if I can do this There is first the mask that you present outwardly, and you know that one's a lie But then there's also a second mask that you present and that's not for anyone else That's where you present yourself to yourself So, look, even if you deal with constant self-doubt and self-criticism or fear of exposure, social anxiety As crippling as these things may feel you still maintain a belief in your own value Namely, that you're worth doubting and criticizing because, even if you're not worthy of someone's desire now, you might be if you had some time to improve Now, the Real, or exposure to the Real, makes even these feelings seem farcical They significantly over-rate your position. And, if you habitually over-weight it too much, you become a narcissist because narcissists blow up their own significance in an effort to block that hole of the Real – that's their learned defense mechanism Lacan writes along this vector that (that is, a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand) So, when you come to fully experience the cosmic joke of every fabrication you've made about yourself Not only that you're not going to change the world and not only that no relationship you have will ever make you happy and even when self-doubt and self-criticism become just absurd that's when you're edging towards the event horizon of the Real, and that's when reality really falls apart Although, long before you have to confront yourself for not being yourself, you encounter a bunch of screens or justifications that stop you before you get there These are your defense mechanisms kicking in 'Oh, come on, of course I'm not so bad!' 'Of course, the future will be better!' So you're transposing the now into the future when you may become desirable then The mirror stage gives you the first screen, then the signifier 'I', and then all of these other constructions of comparing yourself to the image of your ideal 'I' and ultimately believing that that's actually you So let's look at the sorts of things that cause PTSD Abuse. Brutal violence. Senseless disasters. These cause your relatively stable, coherent belief that the world makes sense to fall apart at the seams There the world and all of your ordinary concerns and desires become senseless and, if you've had an experience like that, you know that in a process of recovery, it feels like there is no way to communicate the overwhelming brutality of that trauma to somebody else That unspeakable-ness is why the Real is the Real Finally: the Real So the Real has traumatized you The Real is not a traumatic event The event itself is just the trigger for that earthquake in your psyche That what you have secretly suspected and repressed all along is true That is the rupture of the Real and I hope now you can see why it's worth it to set up this whole psychic apparatus so that we don't have to think that way With a rupture, when something terrible happens, the apparatus stops working and, if you've had an experience like that, it's brutal and takes a long time to recover Well, for Lacan, living itself is recovering Now here is where Lacan goes far beyond psychology in any pedestrian sense Everyone, every subject, has that trauma of the Real under their reality, somewhere The trauma begins in the mirror stage. The mirror stage is the first plane erected against it and the reason you can never be happy, the reason you endlessly desire, and the reason that all subjects are neurotic is that we have that lack that Real 'black hole' hiding somewhere under every fiction that you've constructed You know this but you don't remember that you know it It's a lost object that we never had So, I promised you some actual Lacan so let's turn to that. Here he goes So, viewer, I don't know who you are or where you're at But if the Real has broken into your experience – or something approximating it – at some time or another you'll know what I'm talking about I don't want to give examples because it's incommunicable and that's not just a gimmick This is why the Real cannot be sublimated, signified or even expressed in language because that experience could never make sense to someone else but it'll shake your faith that you are actually yourself For Lacan, So Lacan here is talking about one of Freud's patients After some time and probably some therapy Survivors of the rupture may be able to coherently Describe, that is narrate, their experience in a story as a meaningful event But to make sense of it means that the reality of those situations has already, by that point, been reconstructed or, in Lacan's terms, "the world has been placed back
on its feet" So, once you can offer a structured narrative that makes sense enough to other people that's when the world can start making sense, once again Now, 'souffrance' in French means, uhm, like, 'long-suffering', 'waiting' and also suffering itself, so, 'pain' so there's double meaning it gets both to the point that this Real is underlying your experience and the pain of rupture and collapse when it actually emerges in your experience So just think again, by analogy, think of what it's like to watch someone who has been traumatized, if you've experienced that They can't be reasoned with because 'they' as a subject are not there yet They are not there able to present themselves to themselves, let alone to other people and it takes a long time before survivors' experience can be mediated, rationalized and fit into a narrative that explains why and yet the whole purpose of this narrative is trying to give some meaning or rationale to an experience So this Real, or this analogy, is for Lacan what you are doing at every moment of your life (as long as you're not running on, y'know, full autopilot) You're still trying to give meaning to this hole The Real, then, is just this void to which you add all your justifications, reasons, and meanings But ultimately it's only blocking up a lack, a hole in the whole layout of reality And, now, you have a Real because the Real cannot be faced with any regularity Actually, it's worse than that It's like there's LESS than nothing there It's a lack of nothing, a negation of nothing, because what you hoped would be there isn't Yet the processing-after-the-fact is what makes the Real the Real and why you avoid it, why you're afraid of it In recovery, well, you build up the apparatus back so you can function – and, from the psychoanalytic view there's this whole process of rebuilding the subject's reality, which is living or over-coding that encounter with in symbolic terms Only after the fact can you speak of it Now, what's important for Lacan is not that you have to experience something traumatic to know about the Real because most of what we do as subjects is trying to avoid the recurrence of that original trauma that was forced on us, all of us, in becoming subjects from the very start We lost something that we never had: significance The lives we have to live are always overcoming the fact that some part of us knows, deep down, that life driven by the pleasure principle is senseless and absurd The Real is that truth becoming real in our conscious life, temporarily So when you go to an analyst – when your repetition of symptoms becomes disruptive – you're not trying to cure the cause because the cause – the Real – is incurable It's there because you're a subject That said, I don't really know how this video is going to land. I think it'll make sense to some and not to others And I didn't want to furnish it with too many specific examples. The main reason is that such experiences are... going to be incredibly personal Even though the same Real is down there for every subject – if Lacan is right, that is So, thank you for making it to the end and I hope you got something out of this, in any case I'm PlasticPills méconnaissance. [Glass shattering, as strange slow unsettling techno murmur rises...] [...and then echoes away into silence]
