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I am still considering doing some study into Lacan and Freud.

The real, therefore, is not an object, a thing, but something that is repressed and functions unconsciously, intruding into our symbolic reality in the form of need. The real is a kind of ubiquitous undifferentiated mass from which we must distinguish ourselves, as subjects, through the process of symbolization. It is through the process of cancelling out, of symbolizing the real, that 'social reality' is created. In short, the real does not exist, as existence is a product of thought and language and the real precedes language. The real is 'that which resists symbolization absolutely'.

https://nosubject.com/Jacques_Lacan:Real

Can anyone explain how the real can be repressed if it does not exist and how repression functions in terms of "the real"?

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The real does not get repressed. It is the symbolic that does. The most basic unit of the symbolic is a signifier (i think of it as a word-concept).

Individual signifiers in the signifier chain get repressed, and that is what causes neuroses according to Lacan.

Repression is more 'normal' for Lacan than it was for Freud because Lacan thought repression is an inherent feature of language (the symbolic). In Seminar 20 he says:

From the moment he speaks, from that precise moment and not before, I understand that there is repression.
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  • good quote, though it'd help if you could quote something on 'the real'
    – user71399
    Commented Sep 1 at 3:42

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