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It seems to me that the prevailing position on Lacanian realism has been at odds with the ‘Borromean’framework proffered by Lacan in the later years of his teaching. This framework emphasizes the relative autonomy and mutual dependence of each of the three psychical agencies (real, symbolic, and imaginary). It is therefore possible to discover another version of the Lacanian real which supplements rather than refutes the prevailing orientation and which remains tied to the Borromean framework. To put it in rather simple terms: there are things in the real which are irreducible to the Freudian Realitätsprinzip, and, to borrow a phrase from Jane Bennett, these ‘things have a power too’. 1 I offer three points of departure corresponding to each respective field, each of which allows a rethinking of the question of things:(1) the process of ‘withdrawal’within clinical and metaphysical thought (2) the concept of ‘rupture …