Zupančič Realism in Psychoanalysis
ICI Conference Berlin 2011 Lecture on the second day, 29 March 2011
The absolutely crucial point of this ‘psychoanalytic realism’ is that the real is not a substance or being, but precisely its limit.
That is to say, the real is that which traditional ontology had to cut off in order to be able to speak of ‘being qua being’.
We only arrive at being qua being by subtracting something from it – and this something is precisely the ‘hole’, that which it lacks in order to be fully constituted as being;
the zone of the real is the interval within being itself, on account of which no being is ‘being qua being’, but can only be by being something else than it is.
One can ask, of course, how can it matter if one cuts off something that is not there to begin with?
It matters very much not only because it becomes something when it is cut off, but also since the something it becomes is the very object of psychoanalysis.