reality depends on context.
the Purloined Letter letter in Edgar Allan Poe’s tale shows how every character believes to hold power over other in their own particular subjective reality, although every character is “objectively wrong” about their understanding of what they actually hold (none hold any power at all).
the Symbol is an universal form of knowledge, which was very well explored by S. Freud and C.G. Jung.
it’s transparent to itself, because it says what it has to say, and everyone else can agree on it. for example, the cross in Christianity.
the Signifier, on the other hand is not transparent but obscure (for example, in the Freudian slip), and not universal, but particular.
this can be explained logically.
at the beginning, reality does not exist: because it’s purely neutral (it doesn’t say or mean anything to anyone):
then, a series of pure differences (that act on any human being before being fragmented and articulated into an Ego within the symbolic order), that can be represented by + and -, create a second level of differential articulations. which establishes new possibilities and impossibilities.
the Symbolic level is constructed by 3 terms of articulations, meanwhile the Signifier level is constructed by 4 terms, the 4th term becomes obscure, which announces the emergence of the unconscious.
the Signifier is what governs the unconscious and the articulations of particular subjective structures.
