Demand
The term 'demand' (French: demande) is elaborated by Jacques Lacan in opposition to need and desire.
Jacques Lacan introduces the concept of demand in opposition to need and desire]].
Jacques Lacan posits a distinction between need, demand and desire.
Contents
Demand and Speech
Demand is addressed to the Other.
Development
In the 1956-7 seminar, Object Relations Lacan addresses the call (l'appel or cri) of an infant to the mother.[1]
The screams of the infant become organized in a linguistic structure . The cry "is inserted in a synchronic world of cries organised in a symbolic system."[2]
Demand is thus intimately linked to the human subject's initial helplessness.
The human infant cannot satisfy its own biological needs.
The infant must articulate those needs verbally.
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.
Analytic Treatment
The speech or discourse of the analysand is itself already a demand.[3]
The analysand articulates him or herself entirely in speech. The analysand occupies the position of helplessness, that of the helpless infant. The psychoanalytic situation thus encourags regression. Through the mediation of the demand, the whole past opens up right down to early infancy. 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.
Miscellaneous
Demand arises only from speech. Demand is addressed to someone. Demand is only implicit. Demand is related to a need for love, but also to desire. Demand does not need to be sustained by any real object.
Demand deprives the demand of its satisfaction. 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."
The object of demand is a fantasy object, what is lacking in the unconscious Other.
The function of the object is to make the demand of the subject and the demand of the Other coincide.
Demand, although it is tied to both the symbolic and the real, is primarily imaginary, and thus most closely related to the body.
The symbolic function of the object as a proof of love overshadows its real function as that which satisfies a need.
See Also
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
- demand, 154-6, 209, 235, 269, 271, 273-4,278</ref>
- The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Ed. J.-A. Miller. Trans. A. Sheridan. London: Hogarth Press, 1977.
- Lacan, Jacques. (1966 [2002]).Écrits. Paris: Seuil. Écrits: A selection. (Bruce Fink, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton.
- Lacan, Jacques. (1991). Le Séminaire-livre VIII, le transfert (1960-61). Paris: Seuil.
