Lacan on the untainable real

Whatever in man is loosened up, fragmented, anarchic, establishes its relation to his perceptions on a plane with a completely original tension. The image of his body is the principle of every unity he perceives in objects . . . .Because of this . . . all the objects of his world are always structured around the wandering shadow of his own ego. They will all have a fundamentally anthropomorphic character . . . . Man’s ideal unity, which is never attained as such and escapes him at every moment, is evoked at every moment in this perception. . . . The very image of man brings in here a mediation which is always imaginary, always problematic, and which is therefore never completely fulfilled.

Lacan, The Seminar, Book II (New York: Norton, 1991), 166