Demand
The French terms demander and demande lack the connotations of imperativeness and urgency conveyed by the English word 'demand', and are perhaps closer to the English words 'ask for' and 'request'.
The term 'demand' (demande)
In the 1956-7 seminar, Object Relations Lacan addresses the call (l'appel or cri) of an infant to the mother.[1] Lacan argues that this cry is not merely an instinctual signal but "is inserted in a synchronic world of cries organised in a symbolic system."[2] The screams of the infant become organized in a linguistic structure long before the child is capable of articulating recognisable words.
Jacques Lacan introduces the concept of demand in 1958 in the context of his distinction between need, demand and desire.
It is the symbolic nature of the infant's screams which forms the kernel of Lacan's concept of demand.
The infant is unable to perform the actions that would satisfy its biological needs. The infant must articulate its biological needs in vocal form so that the mother can peform those actions instead.
For example: the infant articulates hunger, a biological need, in a scream so that the mother will feed it.
The object which satisfies need (provided by another) also signifies the Other's love.
The demand that articulates a biological need becomes a demand for love.
The symbolic function of the demand (as a demand for love) overshadows its real function as an articulation of need. The function of demand as an articulation of need becomes overshadows by its symbolic function (as a demand for love).
The biological need that demand articulates can be satisfied.
The demand for love is insatiable.
The demand for love persists as a leftover even after the biological needs have been satisfied.
This leftover constitutes desire.
Demand is thus intimately linked to the human subject's initial helplessness.
By forcing the analysand to express himself entirely in speech, the psychoanalytic situation puts him back in the position of the helpless infant, thus encouraging regression.
Through the mediation of the demand, the whole past opens up right down to early infancy. The subject has never done anything other than demand, he could not have survived otherwise, and we just follow on from there.[3]
However, while the speech of the analysand is itself already a demand (for a reply), this demand is underpinned by deeper demands (to be cured, to be revealed to himself, to become an analyst).[4]
The analyst must engage with the demands of the analysand. He or she must not gratify the demands of the analysand, nor can he or she frustrate them.
In 1961, Lacan rethinks the various stages of libidinal organisation as forms of demand.
The oral stage is constituted by a demand to be fed, which is a demand made by the subject.
In the anal stage, on the other hand, it is not a question of the subject's demand, but the demand of the Other (the parent who disciplines the child in potty-training).[5]
In both of these pregenital stages the satisfaction of demand eclipses desire; only in the genital stage does desire come to be fully constituted.[6]
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The concept of demand is not Freudian. It was developed by Jacques Lacan, who linked it with need and desire (Lacan, 1966, 1991). Demand is identifiable by the five clinical traits that constitute it, by the status that it gives the object, by its function in relation to the Other, and finally by its topological register.
Regarding demand, we can say that 1) it arises only from speech; 2) it is addressed to someone; 3) it is nevertheless only implicit; 4) it is related to a need for love, but also to desire; 5) it does not need to be...
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Demand arises when a lack in the Real becomes articulates in the symbolic medium of language.
Demand, like parapraxes or slips of the tongue, express unconscious signifying formations.
Desire is leftover from the demand. The Real cannot be symbolized. The leftover represents a lost surplus of jouissance for the subject.
"Don't give me what I ask for, that's not it."
ref
demand, 154-6, 209, 235, 269, 271, 273-4,278
References
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Object Relations. La relation d'objet et les structures freudiennes. p.182
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Object Relations. La relation d'objet et les structures freudiennes. p.188
- ↑ E, 254
- ↑ E, 254
- ↑ S8, 238-46, 269
- ↑ S8, 270
- ↑ The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Ed. J.-A. Miller. Trans. A. Sheridan. London: Hogarth Press, 1977.
See Also
The symbolic function of the object as a proof of love overshadows its real function as that which satisfies a need.
