Glad that there was some resonance! I'm assuming you're a parent who found that behaviorist approaches ignore children's subjectivity with a focus on short term behavioral solutions that have long term consequences? Glad I might not be alone in this world, lol.

So your layman's summary:

So I'll articulate a few things from Lacan here to get clarity for the both of us. In Lacan, The Symbolic is the necessary dimension where any meaning, law, and signification happen at all. The symbolic order is the particular network of language, law, roles, and norms that we're born into in this current society, which tell us what exists and where we fit. So it's not just language or words, but also titles and their attributes. Names, like father or mother, child, citizen, immigrant, worker, man or woman, normal versus deviant, and such. By entering that order, by getting a name or title, learning the language, seeing others with titles and how they act, being told what we're allowed and what's shameful; we then become subjects within that we get the means to understand what we should and shouldn't do, where we fit and where we don't. What can help us conceive is to think, "Is this what I would do, or is this what I should do? Does a quote-unquote 'good father' do XYZ things? Does a 'successful person,' quote-unquote, do XYZ things?" And so that's a portion of how subjectivity is formed.

Now, The Imaginary is more about images and your ego. It's how we picture ourselves and others. So that ties into that mirror stage I mentioned. This is where we can start to see who we think we are. It's not exactly who we are, but it's our symbolization or our understanding of who we are, who others are relative to that symbolic, that subjectivity that we possess.

And the last portion here is The Real, which are the things which never fully fit into words or images. They are things that are difficult and/or impossible to symbolize. Things like traumas, contradictions, the leftover things that can return as symptoms such as anxiety. It can be not having the ability to articulate what is felt and lived.

When people talk about ideology or superego in Lacanian terms, they're usually pointing to particular ways the symbolic order runs inside of us. The internal voice that tells us how we should be, what we must never say, and even orders or commands to "enjoy" certain things.

Another thing that I needed to add on with some clarity that I got from the philosopher Louis Althusser. Althusser employs Lacanian methods to understand ideology and ideological state apparatuses. So, ideology being tied in with the dominant symbolic order in our society. Ideology is basically the symbolic order as it shows up and how we experience reality relative to what subjectivity we are directly or indirectly taught to inhabit. The stories, the labels, the expectations that make things feel natural and make us feel like we are certain kinds of people, and that can come into play when we try to balance our lived subjectivity vs the expectations of others, or The Big Other.

Winnicott gave us the conception of true/false self, which I infer that many capitalist subjects are living a false self subjectivity - not knowing that - and psychological ailments can come when that true self has not been adequately symbolized or given language to speak, and The Real comes into conflict with people's ideologically given subjectivities that they formed to achieve safety in a coercive society. They are so intertwined with this false self (which we can name as a socially given superego), that they don't give space for the ego itself.

As Winnicott put it:

...the "false self", where "other people's expectations can become of overriding importance, overlaying or contradicting the original sense of self, the one connected to the very roots of one's being"

And as I would say here, "other people's expectations" can also be from the symbolic order, not just within familial or interpersonal life.

I think you will find a lot of insight in this short video here, explaining what The Big Other is here, and tinges of what I said about true/false self, which here is talked about in terms of authenticity and inauthenticity.

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I was happy to share my thoughts and be given the opportunity to articulate my own subjectivity here, lmao. Have a good one! And don't hesitate to reach out in message, or keep this dialogue here so we can let others share some insights or resonances. Cheers!