Demand
In Lacanian psychoanalysis, demand (French: demande) refers to the articulation of need in language, addressed to the Other, and structured by the Symbolic order. Unlike a simple request, a psychoanalytic demand includes not only the expression of concrete needs but also, implicitly, a demand for love. This excess—what cannot be satisfied by the fulfillment of need—forms the basis of desire. Demand is central to Lacan’s rethinking of subjectivity, speech, and the dynamics of transference in the analytic setting. It emerges from a profound helplessness and is constitutively misrecognized by both speaker and recipient.
Terminology and definition
Everyday demand vs psychoanalytic demand
In everyday discourse, a demand is often understood as a forceful request for something concrete. In Lacanian theory, however, demand is a structural operation that exceeds this utilitarian function. It is not merely about asking but is fundamentally shaped by language, symbolization, and the intersubjective relation with the Other. While an ordinary request might seek a specific object, Lacanian demand always entails a surplus that cannot be satisfied.
French terms: demande, appel, cri
Lacan distinguishes several related terms in French. Demande refers to a formulated, linguistically structured demand. Appel (call) denotes a more primitive invocation of the Other, often associated with the infant’s initial signals for attention. Cri (cry) suggests a pre-linguistic expression of distress. These terms are central in understanding how demand emerges at the interface between the body, affect, and the Symbolic order.
Lacan’s early formulation
The infant’s cry and symbolic insertion
In Seminar IV (1956–1957), Lacan explores how the cry of the infant—initially a biological signal—becomes inserted into the Symbolic system through the Other’s interpretation.[1] What begins as a call for relief (e.g., hunger or discomfort) is received by the caregiver within a network of meaning. The mother’s response transforms the cry into a structured demande, embedding it in language.
From call to structured demand
This symbolic framing retroactively constitutes the cry as a demand. The infant, whose biological needs are mediated through the speech and actions of the caregiver, becomes a speaking subject in relation to the Other. This transformation initiates the formation of the ego and sets the stage for the dialectic of desire.
Need, demand, and desire
Demand as articulation of need in language
Lacan famously distinguishes need, demand, and desire in his 1958 essay "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire." While need refers to biological necessity, once expressed in language, it becomes demand: the subject’s appeal to the Other for satisfaction.[2]
As Lacan writes:
“What is demanded is not the object capable of satisfying the need, but its recognition by the Other.”[2]
This recognition, always mediated through the signifier, shapes the subject’s relation to their own lack.
Demand for love and the address to the Other
Every demand, even when addressing a need, is also implicitly a demand for love. This element cannot be satisfied through material provision. Because demand is addressed to the Other, it seeks acknowledgment and affection—forms of symbolic validation. The caregiver’s response, therefore, carries both functional and affective weight. The child’s cry for food is always also a plea: "Love me."
Desire as remainder (not a separate full theory; link out)
The impossibility of satisfying the demand for love leads to the emergence of desire. Even when needs are met, the subject finds themselves still wanting. Desire, in this schema, is the remainder left behind after demand is addressed but not fully satisfied. It arises precisely from what is missing in the act of communication (see Desire).
Structure vs chronology (avoid developmental naïveté)
While these distinctions might appear developmental—need preceding demand, which gives rise to desire—Lacan insists on their structural simultaneity. The subject’s relation to language, the Other, and lack are always already operative. Demand does not emerge after need; rather, it reframes need within the Symbolic.
Demand, speech, and the Other
The demand of the Other
Demand is not only issued by the subject to the Other—it also returns from the Other to the subject. The demand of the Other imposes expectations, norms, and desires upon the subject, shaping its subjectivity and unconscious structure. These demands often function unconsciously and are encountered as injunctions or prohibitions within the subject’s psychic economy (see Super-Ego, Name-of-the-Father).
Signifier, lack, and misunderstanding
Demand, structured by the signifier, is necessarily distorted. The subject cannot express the fullness of their need or desire in language without loss or misrecognition. What is said (énoncé) is never identical to what is meant (énonciation). This gap between speaker and speech grounds the misunderstandings endemic to all human relations and is central to psychoanalytic interpretation.
Clinical implications
Demand in the analytic situation
In analysis, the speech of the analysand is always a demand—for understanding, for cure, for recognition. Yet the analytic setting reframes this demand by insisting on its articulation in speech and refusing to fulfill it directly. The analyst listens not to satisfy, but to interpret.
Transference and the analyst’s response to demand
The transference is saturated with demands. The analyst is cast in the role of the Other—expected to respond, to love, to know. Lacan emphasizes that the analyst must not gratify this demand, lest they foreclose the emergence of desire. The analyst’s non-response opens the space for subjectivization.
As Lacan states:
"Through the mediation of the demand, the whole past opens up right to early infancy... the subject has never done anything other than demand."[3]
Why analysis does not “gratify” demand (neutral description)
Psychoanalysis distinguishes itself from other therapeutic practices by not aiming to gratify the analysand’s demand. To do so would be to conflate the imaginary satisfaction of needs with the symbolic work of desire. Instead, analysis interprets demand, returning it in a form that enables subjective transformation.
Developmental re-readings in Lacan
Oral demand and satisfaction
In later seminars, Lacan reinterprets the oral stage not merely as a phase of feeding but as a moment structured by demand. The infant’s cry for nourishment becomes a demand directed toward the Other, whose response confers symbolic meaning.
Anal stage and the demand of the Other
In the anal stage, Lacan reverses the polarity: the Other becomes the source of demand. Toilet training, for example, involves the caregiver demanding a specific response from the child. This inversion complicates the subject’s relation to agency and control.[4]
Genitality and the constitution of desire (brief, link out)
Only with the advent of genitality does desire become fully articulated, no longer overshadowed by the satisfaction of demand. Here, Lacan places increasing emphasis on the object a and the desire of the analyst (see Desire, Drive, Object a).
Debates and later receptions
Lacanian commentaries (brief, sourced)
Many Lacanian theorists have elaborated on demand’s implications. Jean Laplanche emphasized its importance in transference dynamics, while Bruce Fink clarifies that psychoanalytic practice targets the analysand’s relation to desire, not need.[5] Dylan Evans highlights that demand is the point at which the subject enters the Symbolic through language.[6]
Points of tension with relational/needs-based vocabularies (neutral, sourced)
In contrast, relational psychoanalysis and object relations theory place greater emphasis on the fulfillment and frustration of needs. Some critics argue that Lacan’s model neglects the importance of actual responsiveness in early development. Others defend Lacan’s structural focus, arguing that even needs are always mediated by language and fantasy.
See also
References
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire. Livre IV. La relation d'objet, 19566-57. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Paris: Seuil, 1991. pp. 182, 188
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. pp. 311–312
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. p. 254
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire. Livre VIII. Le transfert, 1960-61. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Paris: Seuil, 1991. pp. 238–246
- ↑ Fink, Bruce. The Lacanian Subject. Princeton University Press, 1995.
- ↑ Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Routledge, 1996.