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Although it was introduced into [[French ]] by Ignace Meyerson's inaccurate [[translation ]] of the [[Freudian ]] term <i>[[Wunsch]]</i> ([[wish]]), [[desire ]] went on to become a major [[Lacanian ]] [[concept]]. For [[Lacan ]] as well as for [[Freud]], desire is the [[subject]]'s [[yearning ]] for a fundamentally lost [[object]]. Thus for Freud, any [[search ]] for an object is, in fact, an attempt to refind it. For Lacan, however, the [[object of desire ]] is located prior to desire and functions as its [[cause]].Lacan subverted the Freudian aphorism that "a [[dream ]] is the fulfillment of a wish" (Freud, 1900a, p. 121): "If Freud accepts, as the [[reason ]] for a dream that seems to run counter to his [[thesis]], the very desire to contradict him on the part of a subject whom he had tried to convince of his [[theory]], how could he fail to accept the same reason for himself when the law he arrived at is supposed to have come to him from [[other ]] [[people]]?" (Lacan,<i>[[Écrits]]</i>, p. 58). Moreover, in what Freud called the rebus-like [[structure ]] of the dream, Lacan found support for assimilating [[condensation ]] (<i>[[Verdichtung]]</i>) and [[displacement ]] (<i>[[Verschiebung]]</i>) to the tropes of [[metaphor ]] and [[metonymy]]. Thus he was able to conclude that "the [[unconscious ]] is [[structured ]] like a [[language]]."Freud used [[dreams ]] to derive both his first [[topography ]] and a [[model ]] of the [[psychic ]] [[apparatus ]] that defined desire as the "[[cathexis]]" of a mnemic [[image ]] linked to the [[satisfaction ]] of [[need]]. Thus for Freud desire is [[satisfied ]] just once, and any subsequent manifestation of desire is only an impulse (<i>Regung</i>) that aims to reestablish, sometimes to the point of ([[psychotic]]) [[hallucination]], the image of an irretrievably [[lost object]]. This is the "empirical" failure of [[hallucinatory ]] satisfaction that leads to thought—which, Freud says, "is [[nothing ]] but a [[substitute ]] for a hallucinatory wish" (p. 567)—and thus to voluntary [[activity ]] that aims at the satisfaction of need, not desire.Dreams, which realize desires in the quick, "backward" way, serve as an example of the [[psychical ]] apparatus's primary mode of functioning, abandoned because of its inefficacy. [[Censorship]], the [[guarantor ]] of our [[mental ]] health, prevents the impulses of unconscious desire from [[being ]] manifested during the day. [[Symptoms ]] must be considered as the realization of wholly unconscious desires. Dreams, on the other hand, express the attainment of these desires with the consent and [[control ]] of the [[preconscious]], which tilts in the end toward the desire to [[sleep]].On the basis of the "burning [[child ]] dream" (Freud, pp. 509-511), which expressed this desire to sleep, Lacan constructed his [[graph ]] of desire (Lacan, 1958-59,

At the intersection of the [[imaginary ]] and the [[symbolic]], [[human ]] desire is established by a [[loss ]] that can be [[symbolized ]] by the [[separation ]] from the placenta at [[birth]]. This [[primal ]] [[castration ]] gives birth to the subject of an [[impossible ]] [[enjoyment ]] sustained by the object <i>a</i>. Later losses, which constitute the possible [[objects ]] of human desire (the nipple, [[feces]], the [[phallus]]), are always manifested more or less by the [[anxiety ]] that indicates the reappearance of this lost primal enjoyment, that is, the [[lack ]] of lack. That is why the [[speaking ]] being can only "[[symbolize]]" this lack by the minus phi ( /), which is the image of the [[capital ]] phi, F. Likewise, this lack can only be "imagined" in the articulation of the fantasy, =S } <i>a</i>, in which the [[barred ]] S is the subject and the [[symbol ]] } means "desire of." This is the [[form ]] that is best suited to defending against the desire of the Other.This desire "is neither the appetite for satisfaction [Need] nor the [[demand ]] for [[love ]] [Demand], but the [[difference ]] that results from the subtraction of the first from the second" (Lacan,<i>Écrits</i>, p 276). It protects the subject from the enjoyment of the Other by means of the forms that its object takes. In [[phobia ]] the object is prohibited; in [[hysteria ]] it is unsatisfying; and in [[obsession ]] it is merely defended against. In any [[case]], desire remains marked by—and serves as a reminder of—a lost enjoyment. The object of this enjoyment, the phallus, becomes the [[signifier ]] of the very lack of a signifier, and thus the signifier of castration as imposed by language. And so the object of desire is always a [[metonymic ]] object, always a desire for "something else."This Lacanian rereading remains oddly in agreement with Freud on the basis of the analogy that Lacan establishes between desire and dream, and it raises the question of the [[place ]] of language in their theory. If language for Freud is a kind of superstructure linked to the [[life ]] [[instinct]], and thus an [[ideal ]] to be attained, for Lacan it is also the insurmountable [[limit ]] and metaphor of being.

# Dor, Joël. (1997). Introduction to the [[reading ]] of Lacan: The unconscious structured like a language. ([[Judith ]] Feher Gurewich, Ed., in collaboration with Susan Fairfield). North-vale, NJ: J. Aronson. (Original [[work ]] published 1985-1992)# [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1900a). The [[interpretation ]] of dreams. SE, 4-5.# [[Lacan, Jacques]]. (2002).Écrits: A selection. ([[Bruce Fink]], Trans.) New York: W. W. Norton.# ——. (1958-59). Le séminaire-livre VI, le [[désir ]] et son interpretation, unpublished.