The residual part of the realistic forces ---obtained after extracting the monopole terms responsible for bulk properties--- is strongly dominated by pairing and quadrupole interactions, with important $\sigma\tau\cdot\sigma \tau$, octupole and hexadecapole contributions. Their forms differ from the schematic ones through normalizations that lead to a universal $A^{-1/3}$ scaling for all multipoles. Coupling strengths and effective charges are calculated and shown to agree with the observed values.