The Real (n.) is (if viewed through the game of chess) the entire complex set of contingent circumstances which affect the course of the game: The intelligence of the players, the unpredictable intrusions that may disconcert one of the players or directly cut the game short.
The Real (n.) is a much more complex category than the idea of a fixed trans-historical 'hard core' that forever eludes symbolization... it has nothing to do with what kant called the 'thing-in-itself,' reality the way it is out there, independently of us, prior to being distorted by our perceptions.
The Real (n.) is impossible in so far as we cannot express it in language...because the very entrance into language marks our irrevocable separation from the real.
The Real (n.) is impossible, yet still, it continues to exert its influence throughout our adult lives since it is the rock against which all our fantasies and linguistic structures ultimately fail.
The Real (n.) continues to erupt whenever we are made to acknowledge the materiality of our existence, an acknowledgement that is usually perceived as traumatic (since it threatens our very 'reality'), although it also drives lacan's sense of jouissance.
The Real (n.) is relative. Dreaming generally means fantasizing in order to avoid confronting the real. However, a man who encounters something traumatic in his dream awakens and enters into the real so that he can go on dreaming.
The Real (n.) is the essential object which isn't an object any longer, but this something faced with which all words cease and all categories fail, the object of anxiety par excellence.
The Real (n.) is the state of pure, animal need from which we've been severed by our entrance into language.
The Real (n.) is not reality; it is that organic being outside signification, which we can’t know, because it has no signifiers in the world of names the subject inhabits.
The Real (n.) is repressed because it has no way of making itself recognized in our consciousness and is destined to return to disturb and disrupt our engagement with a reality that we imagine we know.
The Real (n.) is unable to use the existing language so makes its effects felt in dreams, slips of the tongue, puns, jokes, or symptoms marked on the body, illnesses or disabilities that seem to have no physiological cause.
The Real (n.) is the unnameable; that which resides beyond the reach of the signifier; lost organic being.