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The imaginary, as
the word itself shows, is related to images, to
those personal and unique images which were printed
in us in the dual relationship we have with our
mothers, in particular. Those images are related to
emotions. An emotion is something which affects our
physiology. That is already something which is
halfway between the psyche and the body.
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The symbolic
is all that our culture printed in us as a
"third party". It is for example our language,
which we haven't chosen but which is a link between
us and the others, it is also reasoning (logic)
which we have in common with the other human
beings, it is the world of the signs, codes and
laws which give human groups a structure.
'Cognitive' is a word used in a more or less
broad sense. It can refer to computation processes
using logical thinking, as well as to any process
concerning knowledge.
It will here be used in the narrower sense,
meaning a rational process. The cognitive therefore
belongs to the symbolical.
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Lacan finally adds
the real
-- different from reality --
which is all that is unbearable, impossible to
represent, which can neither be put into images nor
into symbols, nor expressed through words, it is a
leftover.
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