==Sigmund Freud==
The concept of [[privation]] is essential for [[Freud]].
In [[The Future of An Illusion]], he writes:
<blockquote>"For the sake of a uniform terminology we will describe the fact that an instinct cannot be satisfied as a 'frustration,' the regulation by which this frustration is established as a 'prohibition' and the condition which is produced by the prohibition as a 'privation.'"<ref>[[Freud, Sigmund]]. [[The Future of An Illusion]]. p.10</ref></blockquote>
Later in the same essay, he defines more specifically the [[drive]]-[[wish]]es that result from [[privation]]: [[incest]], the [[pleasure]] in and wish to murder, and cannibalism.
==Melanie Klein==
[[Melanie Klein]] and [[Jacques Lacan]] are the main authors to have taken up this concept.
For [[Klein]], [[privation]] is the basis for the [[paranoid]] [[position]].
<blockquote>"Persecutory anxiety, therefore, enters from the beginning into [the baby's] relation to objects in so far as he is exposed to privations."<ref>Klein, 1932/1952b, p. 199</ref></blockquote>
<blockquote>"Feelings of frustration and grievance lead to phantasying backwards and often focus in retrospect on the privations suffered in relation to the mother's breast."<ref>Klein, 1952a, p. 265</ref></blockquote>
All [[feeling]]s of [[privation]] or [[frustration]] originate in the [[subject]]'s relationship with the [[mother]], specifically with the [[maternal]] [[breast]].
These [[feeling]]s are also articulated with [[persecution]] and fragmentation anxieties.
==Jacques Lacan==
For [[Jacques Lacan]], archaic persecution or [[fragmentation]] [[anxieties]] are to be deduced from [[castration anxiety]] and are not its precursors.
[[Privation]] is what is inscribed in the [[Real]] and reveals its nature.
[[Privation]] corresponds to the "hole" in the [[Real]]; it is the basis of the [[Symbolic]] [[Order]], and the [[agent]] who deprives is always [[Imaginary]].
[[Lacan]]'s answer to the question concerning what is actually being deprived is that
<blockquote>"It is especially the fact that the Woman does not have a penis, that She is deprived of it. The very notion of privation, so tangible and visible in an experience such as that one, implies the symbolization of the object in the real. For in the real, nothing is deprived of anything. Everything that is real is sufficient unto itself. By definition, the real is full [plein]. If we introduce the notion of privation into the real, it is to the extent that we can already symbolize it adequately, or even completely. Indicating that something is not there means supposing its possible presence—that is, introducing into the real, in order to recover it and hollow it out, the simple symbolic order."<ref>{{S4}} pp.237-270</ref></blockquote>
The [[reversal]] effected by [[Lacan]], as compared to authors inspired by [[Klein]], is striking, and it is the basis for his claim of making a rigorous [[return]] to [[Freud]].
However, his was a return to a particular [[Freud]]: In [[Freud]]ian thought, while [[woman]] is indeed deprived of a [[penis]], the [[male]] [[child]] is just as deprived of the [[breast]].
Although [[woman]] can aspire to replace what she [[lack]]s by bearing a [[child]], [[man]] must replace that which he has been deprived of with "spiritual nourishment," or thought.
==Three types of lack==
