The Imaginary, Symbolic and the Real: Register Theory of Lacan (Lacan and Zizek)

This video dives into the Register Theory of Lacan. Following examples given by Zizek and Lacan himself, the goal is to understand the individual registers and their impact on our everyday life.
References:
How to read Lacan, Zizek
Jacques Lacan's Return to Freud, Philippe Julien
On Feminine Sexuality The Limits of Love and Knowledge, Lacan
Ecrits, Lacan

[@addammadd]

I’m watching this at 3:17am having awakened to a bed saturated with my sweat. Nightly I revisit my experiences as an occupying soldier in Iraq. I study Lacan and Baudrillard and Zizek and so on and so on so as to learn a vocabulary I can use to express this self-horror. This nocturnally reified intellectual dungeon. I’m seeking liberation through the sublation of my historical self and actions thereof. This aufebung opens the door but my morality will never quite allow me to walk through it. One who commits such crimes ought to give up the hope of decency. Or maybe, this horror is the only modicum of decency left to someone like me. Or maybe it’s just the reflexive masochism of a Catholic upbringing. Anyhow this video was stimulating and beautifully presented. You should be proud of this effort.

[@misscraycray777]

I hope you get to pick up the pieces of yourself and overcome your trauma.

[@neuronneuron3645]

Freud teaches us in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) that it is the death drive that causes us to relive traumatic past events. In fact, it was the psychology of war veterans that caused him to conceive of this concept. I highly recommend reading this paper if you haven't already. I believe a strong understanding of the death drive might help your cause. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From Wikipedia article on Beyond the Pleasure Principle He found exceptions to the universal power of the pleasure principle-"situations ... with which the pleasure principle cannot cope adequately"-in four main areas: children's games, as exemplified in his grandson's famous "fort-da" game;"the recurrent dreams of war neurotics ...; the pattern of self-injuring behaviour that can be traced through the lives of certain people ["fate neurosis"]; the tendency of many patients in psycho-analysis to act out over and over again unpleasant experiences of their childhood." Freud already felt in 1919 that he could safely postulate "the principle of a repetition compulsion in the unconscious mind, based upon instinctual activity and probably inherent in the very nature of the instincts-a principle powerful enough to overrule the pleasure-principle" Building on his 1914 article "Recollecting, Repeating and Working Through", Freud highlights how the "patient cannot remember the whole of what is repressed in him, and ... is obliged to repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience instead of ... remembering it as something belonging to the past:"a "compulsion to repeat." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lacan takes a linguistic turn on Freud's instinctual unconscious and, I believe, muddies the waters on what the death drive is, claiming it exists in the symbolic order of experience. However, my opinion is that Lacan's contributions only confused Freud's work. With the exception of the treatment of psychosis, of which Freud himself stated psychoanalysis was unable to help whereas Lacan's linguistic unconscious is able to help, his work is a symbolic twist that makes Freudian psychology unreal and disconnected from the body from our nature and more specifically the genital plane. He turns us into disembodied minds. However, perhaps this is a necessary illusion to deal with the demands of the death drive.

[@revolu7363]

The emphasis on collective agency from all three of those thinkers, without that your personal morality is a dungeon.

[@rileyspencer5781]

When the Hindus learnt of Freud ideas they scoffed, saying that westerners were less developed spiritually to as to believe that will to pleasure was the most important part of life

[@NacrunoCreations]

well they should definitely never read what zizek thinks about their spirituality then@@rileyspencer5781

[@dr.phil.pepper3325]

This is one of the best explanations of Lacan I've ever seen.

[@paranoidandroid000]

First video that I watch about Lacan's theories that doesn't consist of a monotone human talking to the camera, but instead made me put myself nearer Lacan's point of view and understanding his way of saying what he said, making my learning of all of this inmensely deeper. Thank you so much for your work

[@sanjinv]

Wow, this was so clear and powerful, "psychophilosphy" at it's best! Also, such a beautiful amalgam of brilliance of the Freud - Lacan - Žižek genius line of thought...

[@mariapapadopoulou7368]

Try dzogchen. James Low .

[@christiantodorov6239]

Amazing video and quality of production. I was shocked when I saw the subscriber and view count. I'll definitely be following the channel.

[@Device_in_use]

There are many videos i have watched but yours is the best, and a comprehensible one. I wish i could grab a tea and sit with you for hours.

[@Schlynn]

I just finished How to Read Lacan and this was a perfect next step to a deeper understanding to the three registers. Thank you.

[@darnna]

thank you!!! finally someone could explain to me what is the imaginary and the symbolic! it was easy to understand and makes so much sense, thanks for this!

[@jiszlai]

very clear and concise, I enjoyed your short and good structuring

[@e6198]

This makes more sense to me than the signifier/signified video. Very interesting ideas, and hard to get your head around them

[@andresmilonas]

Wonderful productions. Thanks so much for doing this videos with very valious information, and so clearly explained with great examples and ilustrations. Greetings from Mexico.

[@eversbrothersproductions1476]

Thank you for your nice comment! People like you is why we make these videos 😁

[@toxendon]

Actual good audio. A rare thing on these kinds of videos.

[@VioletDeliriums]

Excellent use of Zizek's book to help create this video. I just read it, and I like how you go back to Zizek's footnotes and then show the passage in Lacan's writings. I actually read the Zizek book so that I would better understand how he understands (and thus uses) Lacan, rather than to understand Lacan himself. But I do think that there is some use in using Zizek's book to understand Lacan. That said, Halberstam makes an interesting critique of Zizek: Zizexk claims to use Lacan to explain popular culture, but often uses popular culture to explain Lacan. Certainly, that critique makes sense when you read "How to Read Lacan."

[@hadderceballos387]

Excellent video; this was a marvelous job!

[@barnettcohen]

Super helpful in reading NO FUTURE by Edelman

[@realityriffspod]

A good example of this is from Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club, "Rule of the Game," where they have to replace chess pieces with lifesavers because they're missing.

[@Nrandonom134]

Thanks for this concise explanation!

[@visavou]

a big thank you from india .. needed this one

[@laura-laurent]

brilliant video, I would love to hear you explain kristeva's abject

[@golamnur0142]

It is one of the few quality videos on KZbin.

[@dkhushbu1488]

Thankyou really very helpful❤

[@darrengustafson]

Excellent

[@fjassojr]

Very helpful and informative.

[@BlueRockBill]

Very good. A nice explanation. Congratulations. You ruined my day.

[@pushamazad1390]

Thanks for this video

[@ReginaFlanji4386]

that was phenomenal, thanks a lot 😍

[@dangdang699]

Thank you? so much?? it was soooo good. clear and clean

[@embassyoftoysoldier]

So, father's sleeping senses perceived smoke and fire coming from the next door (incorporating reality's perception), which made him construct a dream to keep him out of the (bleak) reality of his son's death. But the guilty trauma wakes him up as a representation of his son, in the dream. Mille grazie.

[@qnina6680]

Good clarifications

[@lukeskirenko]

How do you connect the different notions of the real here at 11:28, of the real as the 'unknowable', and then at 14:59 of the real as that which can can be seen and to which we can awaken? By the end of the video it appears that all that's really being said is that we can learn more about what motivates and compels us, over time. Which is of course not a profound incite, and appears to undermine the idea that there is a register which is 'unknowable'. I suppose it makes sense to say that there are always 'unconscious' reasons for our behaviour, but that's simply to say that developing an idea of oneself happens post hoc in many respects. But that's merely a common sense notion which I'm sure has always existed. On top of that, the rules of culture aren't so much prohibitive as facilitative, and they don't have to be expressed as a divine order, but rather just a system which is necessary in order to be facilitative. That they tend to be expressed as 'law' is a historically contingent thing, and it strikes me that we're moving away from a simple notion of 'authority'.

[@eversbrothersproductions1476]

Thank you very much for your comments. I really like all three of your comments and I will try and answer them as good as I can. Starting with this one. The Real for lacan would be comparable to the "will" of Schopenhauer and the thing-in-itself from Kant. We can never know the thing in itself, but we can apprehend the representation of it. For example, we cannot really see gravity, but we can see its representation as the apple falling. So too with the Real. It is the place of our unattainable jouissance, the thing that pushes us to move. We can see its representations in our behaviour and, for Lacan especially, in our language. The only thing that we have to describe the world around us is our symbols. By watching and deciphering these symbols, we can better understand ourselves and try and minimise suffering. I agree that this is not a new insight, but Lacan gives us a new way of doing this. Analysing our language as a starting point of understanding ourselves can be very useful. Lacan tries to provide a mathematical approach to the functioning of subjects based on language. His theory follows not only Freud, but also the German Idealists like Kant, Fichte, Schopenhauer etc. This will then answer your second part of this comment about "law". What Lacan tries to express is that for us subjects, the only way we can see the world is through representations and the judgements of these representations. This is very similar to the theory of Kant, where he describes how "thinking" is possible in the first place. For Kant, it is not (like the empiricists) that the world tells us how to see it, but rather that the subject has a priori categories that creates the world as a representation within our mind. So we can only see the world as representations given to us in sensibility, which we then "think" according to categories such as cause and effect. What Lacan adds to this is the logical implications of this observation, namely, that for the subject, all objects tell us what to do and not to do. We use language, which is the language of the Other in so far as it is given to us, to describe the world. If you yourself look around you, every object you see is a symbol that tells you what to do with it. If you see a coffee mug, it tells you "drink coffee", if you see a traffic light it tells you "do not cross a red light". In no way is the signified implied in the signifier itself, it is the subject that gives the meaning to the object. We thus never know the thing in itself, only its representation and the judgement between representations. This is what Lacan means with the Big Other. It is the total collection of symbols around us that governs our behaviour in the world. Understanding these representations and the connection between them helps us to understand ourselves. Lacan himself says "we can never change how we are, but we can understand at least better why we are what we are". Hopefully this answers your first question somewhat satisfactory. I do recommend to watch our videos about the subject of Lacan, and the videos on schopenhauer and Kant. Not to promote the channel per se, since views do not really interest me more so people like you with interesting comments, but understanding the theory of these videos helped me alot in understanding the theory of Lacan. Even if you do not agree with it, understanding Kant can change how you see the world. Okay, I will go to your next comment 😁

[@lukeskirenko]

@@eversbrothersproductions1476 Great answer, thankyou. To the extent that I understand it, or understand anything, I do have a Kantian view of things, i.e. all concepts derive from ways in which biological entities try to, and have need to, manipulate and reorganise an external world in order to maintain the organism. And no doubt, states of desiring are of course connected to the fact that the maintenance of the organism involves constant change, constant nutritional replenishment etc.. But it seems to me accounts of things like the 'big other' go way too far in making it seem like there are a hard set of cultural rules, whereas in fact while language is a social phenomena it's also constantly negotiated and reinvented at the individual level, or at the level of the meeting point between individuals. So it does exert a force, but in a manner which is so complex. I.e. we're really pretending if we think we can plot the structures involved in trying to understand that. It would involve a complete picture of the biologically hard-coded aspects of language, the psychological dispositions of all the actors, etc.. A red light doesn't tell you what to do, it provides a signal that tells you what's happening in the environment, i.e. that if you try to cross now you might get hit by cars passing the other way, or that you might get arrested. Then as to whether getting arrested is seen as the consequence of a prohibitive culture or simply a necessary rule that facilitates transport, that depends on the level of sophistication of understanding of the person. So I don't think it makes a great deal of sense to regard these sorts of social cues as clearly a suppression of something. Clearly it depends how authoritarian the culture is, which ties in to discussions about how restrictions and liberty relate to each other. Similarly a cup of coffee doesn't tell you 'drink coffee', but rather the object is apprehended in terms of its meaning, which is that it's something you may or may not want to drink. The big other isn't exactly a monolithic thing... in fact, I would argue that perhaps the main reason people tend to 'submit' to dominant social forms is because they don't have a coordination system to know how the collective will respond if they behave differently. So attitudes get naturalised in a somewhat authoritarian way, but this is acted out in demonstrations of attitude rather than being hard-embedded 'in the language'. This is the mechanism of peer pressure, and it's not dictated by language, but rather the way that the network is composed. So it's actually facilitative on some level to socially enact a normative 'big other', because it provides a sense of security in predicting how people will behave.

[@aprole87]

@@lukeskirenko What if the big Other simultaneously acts as both an impetus and an obstacle? Could it not serve as both, just dependent on the conditions? Understandably, this is very much in the realm of German Idealism- contradiction, Anstoß, and so on and so on...

[@Stevies_Precog_Gym_n_Spa420]

There is no big other.

[@Stevies_Precog_Gym_n_Spa420]

​@@lukeskirenkoseeing things clearly as a suppression of something isn't essential to Lacan. This is usually when I move on to Copjek

[@joshparrott8841]

This is really good

[@massacreee3028]

Amazing! You gained a sub

[@selama16]

Thank you...now i understand something

[@lunar-ix9vu]

Is the imaginary analogous to the ideological? And if the symbolic governs what we see, the ideological/imaginary governs how we see it?

[@PeanutTerror]

Fantastic video, it has a certain je ne sais qua

[@mitchie2267]

Please make more Lacan vids. I want to write an essay about Lacan's/Zizek's lamella and Hellbound, the new K drama.

[@henrytemd]

100 % agree with Christian and E.A.R. Subscribed as well.

[@richardfraser7024]

Thank you

[@Veranocruel-e2h]

Great

[@bluesbunny121]

2:00 If the piece itself is a signifier and its move the signified, and also since according to Lacan, signifier=symbolic and signified=imaginary, then how come you start out by saying that the piece is the imaginary and the move is the symbolic ? It should be the other way around.

[@cocoblues1446]

Many thanks 💛

[@AnthemicLullabyJoshua]

I was assigned this video by my college class actually lol

[@eversbrothersproductions1476]

@@AnthemicLullabyJoshua that is so cool! Thanks for sharing this, you made my day! Can I ask which class you are taking? 😊

[@AnthemicLullabyJoshua]

@@eversbrothersproductions1476 A mix between Philosophy, Pyschoanalysis, philosophy, and art theory at The Evergreen State College...

[@AnthemicLullabyJoshua]

@eversbrothersproductions1476 A philosophy and art theory class about Lacan's imaginary, symbolic, and the real.

[@drmosaddegh]

Can you please release these videos without the melancholic background music?

[@daviddlamini4290]

😂😂😂😂

[@emmahallows]

THANK YOUUUUU! Great video!

[@Vence.]

Thanks man, thanks man.

[@MaestroMecaEric]

Why don't you have more subscribers?, there will be one more with me.👍

[@redsciurus]

Great video but the snow ruins my ability to read

[@palealeable]

How a dutch says "imago" is pretty priceless

[@raginbakin1430]

Lacan’s prose is a bit hard to understand

[@mohana.jasmine]

Maybe I'm off, but I'm pretty sure I'm detecting a Dutch accent here?

[@eversbrothersproductions1476]

@@mohana.jasmine You guessed correctly! 🙃😅

[@jamesbarlow6423]

I never identified with the image in the mirror as my ego, objective self....now what? "We are only ourselves as reflected in the other." Huh?

[@eversbrothersproductions1476]

When you look in the mirror you see yourself and the objectification of you (your ego). This is the split in the subject that Lacan describes. Why do you say to yourself for example: "I am getting that glass of water"? To whom are you saying that? It is you after all that is getting the glass of water. In our video on the subjectivity of Lacan and the graphs of desire this theory is better illustrated. 😁 Hope this helps!

[@ahmadhussain2136]

Someone should also write a book on "How to read Zizek"! 😂

[@Stevies_Precog_Gym_n_Spa420]

In 70 years there will be books about how to read it like there are books on how to read kant and Hegel today.

[@easygardening.4608]

"We are only ourselves in reflections of the other" please please provide me a source of this kind of statement. For the argument of my research paper I just badly in need of this!!! Please...

[@leandrojavier4106]

I can't believe i'm watching this after Evangelion 4.0😅😅

[@God2121-o5j]

What do you mean

[@stopshell8154]

Thank you You sound Dutch btw

[@eversbrothersproductions1476]

@@stopshell8154 thanks for your comment!! And your observation is correct 😁

[@stopshell8154]

@@eversbrothersproductions1476 I’ve watched more videos on your channel now and I am in awe, absolutely great work. To have access to all this information is one of the big privileges of this time.

[@LutherAllen-m3v]

yeah, I be best man, I am not beating up chris

[@drendelous]

too complicated(

[@eceera]

Man I'm not smart enough for this shiz

[@jamesbarlow6423]

Lol

[@allpainnogain5368]

you sound like my crush bro

[@eversbrothersproductions1476]

🤫😉

[@MacSmithVideo]

Early psychology is such mystical nonsense, and French psychology is a thousand times worse.

[@Stevies_Precog_Gym_n_Spa420]

You're absolutely wrong about that. But you should probably commit to an argument than hyperbolic opinion first.

[@jipangoo]

This guy is a total crank

[@Stevies_Precog_Gym_n_Spa420]

Explain