Troubles with the Real: Lacan as Viewer of Alien
The conclusion to be drawn is that the Lacanian Real
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
Immanuel Kant called the "Thing-in-itself," reality
the way it is out there, independently of us, prior
to being distorted by our perceptions: "/.../ this
notion is not at all Kantian. I even insist on this.
If there is a notion of the real, it is extremely
complex and, because of this, incomprehensible, it
cannot be comprehended in a way that would make an
All out of it." How, then, are we to find our way and
to introduce some clarity into this conundrum of the
Reals? Let us begin with Freud's dream on Irma's
injection, selected by him to open his magnum opus
The Interpretation of
Dreams.