"A functional life is spent *not* being yourself in the least neurotic way possible" time to paint this on my ceiling

"Lacan is not a high-school guidance counsellor." - PlasticPills

I used to take a lot out of the School of Life and JBP videos, finding some comfort and guidance in them at the time. It feels a bit embarrassing now, but I'm glad it's led me down the road to content like yours. I've never really managed to get my head around much of what you've covered on your channel through reading the original content, so I really appreciate your efforts to make it all more accessible. That's not to say that I think you've dumbed it down! You do such a great job of contextualising complex and, for many, unfamiliar and unnerving concepts. I hope your channel keeps going and growing. It's something I genuinely look forward to on YT.

Even if I ordered an existential crisis off of Amazon, it would not have been delivered so switfly and elegantly

I was planning on falling into another existential crisis anyways

first time I am exposed to Lacan, now I am not sure if others are like this, but when coming out of a psychedelic trip, it feels immediately reality shattering, universe-changing and indescribable. As time progresses you can slowly put your experience together in words and make a meaning out of it, but at the same pace, the trip loses significance and mystique in your consciousness. Eventually it turns merely into "that cool experience" that you had lol... Maybe such process is what the video refers as the "apparatus", reality being gradually pieced back together

I've been in and out of therapy since my mid teens - and honestly, Lacan's psychology as you've explained it feels like the first time a theory of psychology has actually grasped what I've gone through and makes total sense personally. It's weird, but this video has both deeply disturbed and yet elated me. Honestly, a fantastic video.

PlasticPills is the most underrated philosophy youtuber. He makes things as clear as they can possibly be and doesn't obfuscate the material to sound intelligent. Your ideal-I seems pretty cool plasticpills

Lowkey best explanation of what trauma is like that I've ever heard

I can imagine that the music in the background was playing while lacan was analysing his patients

"The ultimate melancholic experience is the loss of desire itself" - Zizek. I've experienced the Real multiple times, and it is not simply dissociation, it really does break your entire reality apart. Being able to put things into to words and make it part of a narrative is what made me become "down to earth" again so to speak. Excellent video.

I am 13 minutes in and I have started crying. I am not alone.

this broke me at a level that was unprecedented in my life. i can't even explain the experience. thanks for the... thing

I was not ready for this

omg finally someone explains it without name\term dropping that you need a PHD only to know the droppings. It's like "you are not worth it if you don't understand it". This is great, please PlasticPlills keep doing what you do

Masterful take on these works and topics. I've experienced the death of my parents while young. Also, the senseless violence having been the aggrieved party in an armed robbery in my own home. On a separate occasion I suffered multiple fractures to my face in an unprovoked violent attack by multiple parties outside of a venue. Luckily I've rebounded in high spirits and never suffered from PTSD. Thing is, with all that I've been fortunate to experience and walk away from without much inconvenience, and as much as I've read, reflected, and revisited Lacan's works and other texts that many of your videos tackle (and tackle well 😊) I had never come to understand, in any capacity, the "Real" until last summer. During a friend's destination wedding I engaged in some extra ceremonial, psychedelic activities comprised of three alphabet characters. It wasn't my first rodeo, however, I had not anticipated the strength of the portion taken. Most of the experience was delightful, mainly isolated and filled with music and laughter... It was wasn't until shortly prior to the reintegration phase of returning to 'normal' that I found myself having lost 'my self' and feeling overwhelmed with a faint terror. A feeling that although I was 'me' I could never get back to 'being me' even though I outwardly functioned fine. Everything was alien and nonsensical. It was absolutely terrible and perfectly fine all at once. Your lesson on the 'Real' in this video is the first time I've heard ANYONE articulate similarities to what I experienced that morning. I got enthusiastically nervous when your lecture started to conjure up what I felt then. Once I've reconstructed my reality, I've never felt more alive than after the occurrences when I recognize that I may not be. -Thank you

I organized this one into sections because it's so damn long. Here are the timestamps if you get bored and want to skip around: 0:22 - Intro 6:02 - Trauma as Analogy for the Real 16:14 - Collapse of the Ideal I 22:44 - Lacan on the Real Happy collapsing!

The Real seems like both the ground of trauma, and the source of what some mystics and Buddhists call "the great doubt". I've experienced clinical trauma and what's called "negative psychosis", which is contentless psychosis (no hallucinations or delusions or paranoia) while practicing hours-often simultaneous hours-Zen shikantaza ("just sitting", but really maintaining a diligent great doubt in everything symbolic or imaginary that arises, but through persistently maintained physical attention/proprioception rather than intellectual exercise). I can say that the ruptures aren't always terrifying. They elicit chemical responses that can trigger panic or disgust, those secondary reactions can be desensitised, but the chemical agitation is palpable and patterned. I wouldn't, however, have had words for it at the time: The first words or analogies the would pop up after that would be to rationalise it or distract from it, if not flat-out run from it. The "agitation" sensations/gestalts also rapidly shift into more recognisable basic emotions, and my memory of the exact sensations faded rapidly and I couldn't "call-up" such gestalts in memory if I tried. Also, from my experience, any passive thoughts I had while in that experience would be almost impossible to recall, but the thoughts immediately after (the thoughts accompanying the recognisable basic emotions) would be impossible to forget because they were usually neurotic, insecure, and ego-dystonic. I'm not sure if what I'm describing is the Real, but it's what was left when everything else "dropped off", it's impossible to put into words other than through contrast to other experiences, and it doesn't have a particular signature like emotions. At my monastery, we discussed "feeling tones" (aversive, attractive, inert/indifferent) and this absence of "experiences" didn't really have one, but being there stirred up intense feelings of every "tone". I wonder if Lacan has anything to say about how orbiting closer to the Real can *break apart* neuroses and de-habituate their influence, because whatever i was "doing" in Zen didn't just put me close to my triggers and overwhelm me into some psychotic stupor; rather, staying close to whatever was happening, regardless of whether it was boring, intense, intriguing, psychotic, stupefied, re-traumatising, and allowing my mind and chemicals to react without "turning" the reactions every which way, ultimately freed me from a lot of cognitive-emotional habits that made my life miserable and unbearable. Idk, just circling that drain as close as I can get here. I "grok" what you mean when you say it's unsignifiable though. It's neither coherent nor comprehensible, but trying to explain it can be meaningful. Or at least filled with the force or vector from which we construct meaning.

I just retired as a therapist after working for fifty two years and if i ever had a question of what an encounter with e real meant, i've had it now. The weird thing is that I knew it would be coming but I thought I could embrace it. I have woken up in terror as i try to imagine my day and therefore my self. I promised myself I would not fill this void with manic defenses. Six months later I am letting the impossibilty of that come as a real limit to my sense of being alive. Great description in the lecture.

Really impressive work here, thank you for this.

Oh man, that snicker at JP's expense was brutal. Anyways, the Real just sounds like what attaining nirvana in the eastern traditions sounds like. Pure emptiness or ego death.

Stumbled onto this, thinking 'Yep, sure to be another mishmash of half-baked, derivative "Lacan" bite-size over-simplifications, misreadings, misleadings and downright errors.' How wrong I was! I'm in awe of how clearly, insightfully and accurately you get into these most difficult of ideas. And how effectively you communicate them, not least by expecting real attentiveness from your viewers, while using the technology to reinforce explanations, rather than glossing them. Keep pushing the envelope like this, you're doing seriously great work.

This has put words to something I have never really been able to grapple with before. It is so well communicated (if I understand it correctly as I assume, lol). It's interesting how the Real can be experienced in times of immense tragedy and immense bittersweet joy. Being the only survivor of a fatal car crash, watching your childhood home fade away into the distance when you move, and doing DMT all kinda get you to that place.

"you must wear a mask around the people you care about" did he just predict covid?

It's interesting that Lacan associates "The real" with trauma and Buddhist associate "emptiness, nothingness" with Nirvana, enlightenment.

"You may find out that your self-doubt means nothing was ever there" -Green Day (who knew Billy Joel read Lacan)

I have only just algorithmed across your channel; always late to the party. Some of your descriptions resonated like experiencing our fictions as fictions. As a young person, trauma and psychedelics gave me that gift (‘gift’ is my attempt at edge lord, disregard what you need to). I recall ranting something like systems can not function once identified and experienced as systems which was my youthful and inarticulate attempt to talk about an encounter with the real before I had encountered Lacan. Reading Lacan changed my life-I am so self-helpish!-but so did LSD and childhood abuse (and everything else, I’m just running the highlight reel). Lacan gave me a vocabulary for understanding. I think your effort here is pretty good.

I’ve been interested in Lacan for 35 years but I’ve never seen his ideas presented so clearly and coherently as you have done. Thank you for correcting some misunderstandings that I have perpetuated over the years. I know he was a psychoanalyst, but I believe he is also one of the most underrated philosophers of the twentieth century.

Though complicated for many people beguiled by their own escapism Lacan's perspective very much makes sense, describing the inner working of human beings down to the minute detail. Thank you for your outstanding work and producing such high quality videos like this one here for lay persons like me.

Hey, I've submitted captions for this one as well. The one bit I couldn't quite get was the final sign-off unfortunately, so maybe review that. Might be worth checking the rest of them, but I've been over it relatively carefully. All the best, big love

As someone who just recently underwent a traumatic week that completely ruptured my sense of self and reality, this video made sense. A LOT of sense. Too much sense in fact....

Man, I do not know why this video has only 22k views. One of the best on all of youtube.

Yo, using this video as a little Zizekian resource on Lacanian objects, etc. I can feel the After Effects 3D camera work at 2:30. The camera still scares me.

Shouts to you man, great content as always. Shared it in a couple groups to help you get some more (very deserved) followers

I’ve only watched your two videos on Lacan, but they are amazing! Finally feel like I understood something of this theory. Thank you so much for making these videos

Okay, In thirty minutes, almost of a sudden, all had become clearer than it's been for me in two semesters of psychoanalysis college class. This video, this work, this channel deserves a standing ovation. THANK YOU.

Thanks so much for making this! I found it deeply profound. All the effort you put into explaining the subject matter and producing a quality video really shows through. Much love

you have hit it out of the park my friend. please dont stop creating videos even if your channel doesnt blow up. if your patreon doesnt get as lit just continue your podcast.

I was attentively watching your video but I have to stop to comment this. Woah! It's impressive to see you explain such hard subject without many pauses or jump cuts, and you interract with the graphic on the screen. Kudos to you and all the technical people!

Love the video! I'm reading Baudrillard's Fatal Strategies right now, and this video's a welcome addition. Baudrillard talks directly about Lacan, as well as spending time with his own ideas that are adjacent to a good bit of this video. The new, higher tech animations and key in the bottom corner are quite cool as well.

Coming back from the real is scary. You rebuild yourself from nothing entering knowingly into a contract that is life can continue as long as you constantly work to forget the void.

thanks for the video, i guess this whole video just helps me rationalize reality in a more broader sense to actually keep living life, thanks! nice new effects by the way, love how the channel keeps trying new things and innovating.

This is invaluable. You break down some of Lacan's most difficult concepts into such graspable terms, which is a real talent. Can't thank you enough for making this video!

Your video series on Lacan have really helped me wrap my head around Lacan’s theoretical contributions. Thank you!

didn't think i could ever get emotional watching a theory vid on youtube... a lot has come into focus over the last 30 mins, thank you

Outstanding video, my friend. I’m reasonably well informed on psychological/philosophical topics, and I know Lacan is a tough nut to crack-especially the Real. I find a lot of value in psychoanalysis when addressing past traumatic events compared to other forms of therapy-I think that is where Lacan and other psychoanalysts really shine. Bravo!

I could have listened to you talk about this for hours, deeply fascinating. Puts into perspective a few moments in my life that I couldn’t explain previously

Thanks for making this buddy! Lacan is so hard to explain, but you've summed it up in a really quick vid. Appreciate it.

ON MY MOMA- This has been the best video I have watched on youtube.

There are artists, composers and poets who can provide an encounter with the real. It cannot be explained, but it can be experienced, yes.

I cannot tell you how much I connect with this video. You've put into words (well, what can be put into words) what I've been struggling with for almost a lifetime. It's also very reassuring to know that it's something that can be alleviated over time.

This is the best video i have seen till now regarding Lacan. And your explanation has enabled me to better comprehend Lacan. Thank you.

What a dare! This demonization of the Real seems very macho to me. It's described like a horror movie monster - for the "chosen few" who can stomach it and so on . . . Why shouldn't the Real be a transcendental experience of sublime nothingness? - It also doesn't convince me that everything we do in this world must be a charade. It would be impossible to forfeit one's life then, because there's no doom.

Well articulated, thank you. I see parallels between the Real and the Absurd; think Sarte's "La Nausée." Interestingly, it seems that the philosopher, or the person who has such critical intuitions, may be able to think themselves into encounters with the Real. Such an encounter would not require the occurence of a traumatic physical event, but would, in response to the terrifying recognition of the Real, cause a traumatic mental event. Trauma occurs in either case. Thus I see the method of psychological treatment/recovery differing in respect to the intellect of the victim. Those who had been always happily delusional by their Reality must, after the traumatic physical event occurs, be guided back into that illusion. Those whose trauma derives from the breaking of that illusion cannot do this. They will never again be contented with it; they are all too aware of its meaninglessness. What to do with them? That's the question existential philosophy attempts to answer. Camus said, "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." Suicide is a non-option because this person has just recognized the fact that there is nothing in them to kill. The only solution is to radically recreate the self, which is then not a delusion, because you have consciously created it.

I love this. Great quality and very clear description! I also love the citations that you use; it's important to use primary sources instead of secondary sources only.. have subscribed.

You are great at this. Only when I listened to your explanation did I begin to make sense of Lacan. I really hope you do more videos on these topics. I like your references to culture today. But would love to watch more in depth videos on these lines. Please continue to create.

Amazing Video, the concepts are thoroughly and accurately explained. I have been in analysis with a disciple of Lacan (he was part of the Ecole Freudienne de Paris), and your video is accurately portraying most of the properties ( if one can attribute any to this register) of the Real. I would love it if you delve in your next videos on the Concept of the Sinthome, it eases the anxiety a bit.

Thanks, I recently had a bit of a traumatic experience and this has helped me begin to parse it

This is an incredible explanation of Lacanian the Real, and with the previous video on the other two registers, they give an excellent understanding of Lacan's Subjectivity theory. It actually helped me a lot in making sense of the registers and subjectivity as a whole.

You did a very good job of making the Real something which finally is starting to make sense to me as part of a framework. I had just about given up trying to read Lacan, but now I think I know how to approach making sense of it. Thanks!

This was great, I used to read Lacan when I was in university. I think you did a great job.

I was an incredibly devout Mormon until November 8th, 2015 when my entire world was pulled out from under me. I understand the black hole that is left after experiencing The Real very well. But not only is my life better from not being in an oppressive religion, the experience I had of loosing all of my coordinates has granted me the capacity to deterritorialize in a safe way in parts of my life going forward.

Thank you for this! I've been trying to find good information about Lacan on youtube for months now

4 years late but I absolutely love your content, humor and the cool visuals, they help a WHOLE lot. Also not sure if anyone's mentioned it but a big thank you for writing the captions too, I'm sure it took a lot of time to complete. Truly one of the best creators/teachers of philosophy on here.

Thanks for this. So many of us outside of Academia are greatful for providing these lessons! I think I may have had a few close encounters with the Real. This video made me just wanna call up my closest friend, go running in the woods together and share a meal afterwards. Peace to all.

I love Lacan. Nothingness is a terrible in Western psyche, but in zen buddhism is a really good thing. I practice meditation.

I am so grateful for finding this channel. Brilliant!

I have watched this video many times. I feel very convinced. You make a lot of sense. Thank you for it. It is very good. If you continue like this, i think you re going to save the world

This shit is so good. You're very good at explaining concepts, good job!

Checking back in. This video seems to be doing fantastically well with lots of engagement. Cheers

incredible! this video and your "mirror stage" videos are my first exposures to lacan. I've been studying psychoanalysis in my free time for about a year now (after studying psychology for a few years) and i've been interested in Lacan for a while after listening to Zizek speak of him. I can relate personally to what has been said here and once again - as this happens frequently - i am utterly taken aback at the precision with which psychoanalysis describes the human condition. thanks for your effort it is appreciated!

Thank you....this helped make SO much more sense out of the writings of Lacan and Freud for my Master's course on analyzing literature. You simplified and clarified it very well. Thank you!!

This video does struck cord near my event horizon

I've studied Lacan for the last couple of years, snd i could say, this is maybe the best KZfaq Introduction of lacans work, and specially the real, which is really difficult to grasp. Specially the absolute Negativity (lack of Nothing, less than Nothing). But i think, it was a little bit too much for one video. I'm waiting a new video about "Jouissance". Well done !!

I like how you pause after introducing an idea. Gives us time to grasp it

All of your videos are incredible. This may be one of your best. Profoundly helpful on every level

Thank you for this video. I've recently began exploring Lacan's texts and others commentaries on his theory. I thought the two videos on Lacan were easy to understand and broke down his theory in a way which was easy to decipher and make sense of. The animation in the video was creative and helpful and also added to the whole experience of 'the real'... I use a lot of Winnicott and Bion in my practice... My supervisors follow the object-relations school of psychoanalysis... I've started delving into Lacan because of my interest in language and its relationship to trauma... While watching the video I thought it was interesting and felt like there were subtle ties in Winnicott's unthinkable anxiety, Bion's nameless dread, Grotstein's writings on blackholes and also Green's work on the negative... I thought all of these were in some ways coming closer to the experience of the real... Those were some of my thoughts :) Thanks for the video once again.

This episode almost broke me, dude. lol and it didnt do its thing until later on when I was explaining it to someone and we both just had a kinda real event.

Thank you thank you thank you for this amazing video here for me and others - your work lives on and on and is very appreciated.

Thank you for the video. Your hard work and honest presentation is appreciated and obliged.

this is mind-blowingly good. thank you!

Words can’t explain how great this video is(almost like it resists symbolization as a Real ;))

I absolutely loved these Lacan Videos and especially their Animations - The part of the self which is projected outwards, leaving a hole in the body, the triangle transforming into a pyramid where the real is a plain - amazing stuff, thank you so much for this.

It would be interesting for someone to discuss and compare the concept of "Real" by Lacan and Buddhist's concept of "Emptiness."

This is a great video. In addition to the content, the editing and graphics are great, and should hopefully lift the bar for other KZfaq theory types. Well done.

Hands down. This guy is the coolest, the most informative and the most creative “Theory youtuber” out there. I hope you would keep the wonderful job up. 👏🏻👍🏻

bro, youre awesome, and im saying this as a psychoanalyst. Great explanation, arguments, examples... everything. Congrats!

Your explanation of Lacan’s Real hits closest to the mark of encapsulating any description I’ve ever been able to make of the most intense and harrowing acid trip I’ve ever had. And yes, reality has never been as stable.

A friend asked out of the blue to talk with me about Lacan, and we did that earlier tonight. I haven't read him but was curious what she'd have to say. I went through your preceding video (revised version) and that was a great help in sussing out the meaning from her recollections of the material. There was a quote she had garbled but made sense once she found the original: "The picture is in my eye, but I am in the picture." As for the rupture of reality by the real, thank you for the lucid explanation. I think I even understood most of it. I believe rupture accounts well for a time a few years ago when I was in a stadium full of people and suddenly hit by the realization that I had no meaningful connection to any of them and that life was ephemeral, that living and dying are both solitary activities. These truths were not new of course, but I felt the full weight of them in those moments in the foreground of my experience, as an existential crisis. (The way I dealt with it is another story.)

More Lacan please!! I’ve listened to this multiple times and probably will listen to it a few more times.

I am late to the party here, however, this video is phenomenal. Even though the theory feels a bit like metaphysics - and I am neither an expert of metaphysics or psychology- it feels like it touches something that underlies humanity. It is not pretty, and it doesn’t make you happy, it feels like a mere description of something. I wish you would do more videos on Lacan or maybe on the reasons why Lacan isn’t as popular anymore, and how the post-structuralist tradition kinda put an end to it. Anyways, you are probably busy with your new “series” that is also highly intriguing and compelling. Your channel is a real gem!

Amazing explanation... Well done!

That music in the background is sooo REAL.

this is the best channel on youtube if you ask me

I love this video so much, thank you for making it.

Damn, that video. I delved into Lacan a couple of months ago, so I am not THE person qualified to comment on the excellence of the video, however I feel a deep urge to congratulate you for the effort and the (huge, I am sure) amount of time spent on making sense of the whole thing. My understanding on the Real was pretty close to your ideas. I also need to share with you the following fact: a couple of hours before your upload, I searched for the Real on youtube, and draw the conclusion you draw on the video caption. Then, I went back to studying, reading a chapter on the Real from S. Homer's introduction to Lacan. And a few hourse later, I saw a notification regarding your video. A hell of a coincidence, right? Anyway, fun fact, not important. All these, however, made me comment on the video, which is something I rarely do. What bothers me now that (I tell myself that) I get a grip on Lacan's triadic schema is the signified. The signifier is part of the Symbolic, and the image of the signified is part of the Imaginary. The futility (?) of the signified is part of the Real, and all these refer to psychic qualities regarding that signified. But what about the actual signified? What about the 'real' table, which existence I perceive distorted through my senses and language? It's there, no doubt about it (haha), and I thought that probably Lacan would locate it in the realm of the Real. However the notions of the Real described above and in bibliography, make no mention of such a concept, so my guess was rather wrong. So, what does Lacan say about the external world, the things, animals, etc, as "things existing" idependently of our conceptions about them? Did he ever mention anything on the subject? p.s. "The habit of saying I" is very well represented on my comment, haha. Keep it up mate, great work!

The Real "must once again be apprehended in its experience of rupture, between perception and conciousness". This made me feel like it's time for a video on Merleau-Ponty's body phenomenology :) what do you think PlasticPills?

That background sound fits so well to Lacan's! Very informative video mate, helped me a lot! Great experience. Greetins from Brazil

I'm not sure if any other comments have pointed this out yet, but what you mentioned around the 10-minute mark about the so-called "life narrative" is actually a really important concept in contemporary personality psychology, even from a scientific standpoint. What's even more amazing is that Lacan was seemingly talking about this decades before it entered the science of psychology. Really fascinating stuff, and amazing video as always!

Finally a damn video that explains Lacan so well, I was struggling to find a way to get into Lacan, but other sources seemed so complex, but dude to this video I can now step into it, and also can you tell me how lacanian psychoanalysis can help treat someone? And what do you think about jung?