what is the symbolic order
The Symbolic (or Symbolic Order) is a part of the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, part of his attempt to distinguish between those elementary registers whose grounding I later put forward in these terms: the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real â a distinction never previously made in psychoanalysis.or a decade or so after the Rome Report, Lacan found in the concept of the symbolic an answer to the neurotic problematic of the imaginary: It is the task of symbolism to forbid imaginary capture ... supremacy of the symbolic over the imaginary ... supremacy of the symbolic over the real.