Lacan defines three registers through which the subject and their world are organized: The Real, Symbolic, the Imaginary The Symbolic and the Imaginary are orders of representation, whereas the Real is an order of everything that evades representation and meaning. This gap is fundamental to the general predicament of mental life, as some of its most powerful phenomena are witnessed in the treatment via the symptom and within transference.

 

Bibliography:

Lacan, Jacques (1949). The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience. In Écrits, translated by Bruce Fink, pp.75–81. New York: WW Norton (2006).

 

Lacan, Jacques (1954–1955). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, translated by Sylvana Tomaselli. New York: WW Norton (1991), pp. 134-145; pp. 235-247.

 

Lacan, Jacques (1959–1960). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, translated by Dennis Porter. London: WW Norton (1997), pp. 43-70.

 

Lacan, Jacques (1962–1963). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X: Anxiety. translated by A.R. Price. New York: Polity Press (2016), pp. 157-169.

 

Lacan, Jacques (1972–1973). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: Encore – On Feminine Sexuality and the Limits of Love and Knowledge, translated by Bruce Fink. New York: WW Norton (1998), pp. 38-50.