Psychoanalysis is a terribly efficient instrument, and because it is more and more a prestigious instrument, we run the risk of using it with a purpose for which it was not made for, and in this way we may degrade it.
Jacques LacanRead
The real is what resists symbolization absolutely.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that reality cannot be fully captured or represented through symbols or language.
Jacques Lacan's quote highlights the idea that the essence of reality is beyond what we can articulate or symbolize. He argues that our attempts to represent reality, whether through language or symbols, will always fall short, as true reality is something that cannot be completely encapsulated in our words or thoughts. This challenges us to reconsider the limitations of our understanding and the ways we express our experiences.
Themes
RealitySymbolizationRepresentationLanguagePhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a philosophy lecture discussing the limitations of language.
More from Jacques Lacan
All quotes βBut what Freud showed usβ¦ was that nothing can be grasped, destroyed, or burnt, except in a symbolic way, as one says, in effigie, in absentia.
Jacques LacanRead
If psychoanalysis clarifies some facts of sexuality, it is not by aiming at them in their own reality, not in biological experience.
Jacques LacanRead
I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think. I am not whenever I am the plaything of my thought; I think of what I am where I do not think to think.
Jacques LacanRead
The reason we go to poetry is not for wisdom, but for the dismantling of wisdom
Jacques LacanRead
Meaning is produced not only by the relationship between the signifier and the signified but also, crucially, by the position of the signifiers in relation to other signifiers.
Jacques LacanRead
Similar quotes
My thoughts are whirled like a potter's wheel; I know not where I am nor what I do.
William ShakespeareRead
The quality of rhetoric emanating from the psychedelic community must improve radically. If it does not, we will forfeit the reclamation of our birthright and all opportunity for exploring the psychedelic dimension will be closed off.
Terence MckennaRead
I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm also not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords.
Linus TorvaldsRead
It seemed to her such nonsense-inventing differences, when people, heaven knows, were different enough without that.
Virginia WoolfRead
The real question is not whether life exists after death. The real question is whether you are alive before death.
RajneeshRead
What do we know but that we face one another in this place?
William Butler YeatsRead