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In the Lacanian cosmology desire <center>{| cellpadding="2" cellspacing="5" align="center" style="border:1px solid #aaaaaa;text-align:center;margin:6px -8px;align:center;vertical-align:top;width:90%;background-color:#fcfcfc"|style="text-align:center;color:#000;line-height:2em;width:100%;";|This article is fundamental to every aspect of the psychic life of the individual and to the social system in which the individual finds himself or herself embeddedcurrently undergoing major editing. It is endemic to the symbolic order (since it is at base 's a quest for presencemess right now, the possibility of which is precluded by the mechanism of signification), and thus inhabits all signification, providing the subject with its primary motivation and frustrationbut will be fixed soon. The chief elements of the Lacanian conception of desire as I will outline it here are its origins in the master|}</slave dialectic of G.W.F. Hegel (as explicated by Alexandre Kojève), its fundamentally social dimension, its relationship to the death drive, and finally its focus on the chief bugbear of all Lacan’s thought, the objet a.center>{{Topppp}}désir]]''|-|| [[German]]: ''[[Wunsch{{Bottom}}

a) Hegel:Back to the top.As with Lacan’s conception of the symbolic order, his conception The concept of [[desire ]] is most fruitfully conceived in light at the center of its antecedents [[Lacan]]ian [[psychoanalysis]] as a theoretical, ethical and sourcesclinical point of reference. For desire Theoretically, Lacan draws almost exclusively on the work 's elaboration of Hegel as it was popularised through Kojève’s lectures in Paris in the 1930sconcept is supported by, yet goes beyond, its Freudian origins. The central Hegelian text for From an ethical perspective, Lacan is has examined in an original way the Phenomenology of Spirit, particularly relationship between desire and the section which elaborates the master/slave dialectic as a dawning moment of individual self-consciousness: "Hegel […[law]] provided the ultimate theory of the proper function of aggressivity in human ontology, seeming to prophecy the iron law of our timeand its implications for [[treatment|psychoanalytic praxis]]. From the conflict of the Master and Slave, <!-- he deduced the entire subjective and objective progress concept of our history" (Ecrits 26). The connection between aggressivity and [[desire ]] is so fundamental that Lacan does not even mention it in this passage, though it turns up repeatedly in his work, perhaps most obviously in his formulation of the infant’s aggressive rivalrous response to his or her specular image in the very moment central concern of recognising it as an object of desire (as that with which he or she would like to be identified)[[psychoanalytic theory]].-->

The basic steps in Hegel’s dialectic ==Sigmund Freud==<!--[[Freud]]'s ''[[Interpretation of Dreams]]'' established the master and basis for the slave are as follows: In a primal moment and place psychoanalytic conception of desire (not unlike that in which Freud situated the primal act of the originary parricideincluding Lacan's own contributions) before , even if the advent of any human community whatever, two individuals encounter one another. Prior to this encounter each thinks of himself Freudian ''[[Wunsch]]'' (translated as unique and supreme 'wish' in his uniqueness – this uniqueness and supremacy is the very foundation of each individual’s identity''[[Standard Edition]]'') does not exactly coincide with Lacan's desire.<ref>(Lacan, 1977 [1959], pp. When the two individuals confront one another256-7)</ref>-->[[Lacan]]'s term, then''[[désir]]'', each is faced with the apparition term used in the [[French]] translations of another individual that [[Freud]] to translate [[Freud]]'s term ''[[Wunsch]]'', which is seemingly of the same sort. Each experiences the confrontation translated as a threat to his position of uniqueness and supremacy "[[wish]]" in the world''[[Standard Edition]]''. Thus <!-- Hence English translators of [[Lacan]] are faced with a dilemma; should they translate ''[[désir]]'' by "[[wish]]", which is closer to [[Freud]]'s ''[[Wunsch]]'', or should they translate it as "[[desire]]", which is closer to the prospect of having the two axes of their identities disrupted[[French]] term, but which lacks the two individuals are unable allusion to acknowledge each other as creatures [[Freud]]? All of [[Lacan]]'s [[English]] translators have opted for the same order without abandoning their own identities. To do so would be to suspend latter, since the [[English]] term "[[desire for recognition which forms ]]" conveys, like the [[French]] term, the basic motivation implication of each interlocutor in this situationa ''continuous force'', which is essential to [[Lacan]]'s concept. Each seeks recognition of his supremacy from The [[English]] term also carries with it the other, but neither will grant it same allusions to [[Hegel]]'s ''[[Begierde]]'' as are carried by the other[[French]] term, since to do and thus retains the philosophical nuances which are so would amount essential to ceding the claims to supremacy[[Lacan]]'s concept of ''[[désir]]'' and which make it "a category far wider and more abstract than any employed by [[Freud]] himself." -->

The next step in this vignette is that each individual sets about asserting his uniqueness and supremacy by attempting to destroy By shifting the other. This fight is object of study from the Hegelian primal fight to imagery of the death which can have only two possible outcomes. In manifest content of the first and more sterile possibility, neither individual cedes his claim dream to supremacy and one eventually succeeds its unconscious determinants in slaying the other. The victor is thus returned to his position of uniqueness and supremacydreaming subject, at least until he encounters yet another individual and Freud unveiled the drama plays itself out all over again. The second possibility is that one structure of both the individuals will succumb to the instinct for self-preservation dream and surrender to the other. The chief consequence of this surrender is that the loser of the battle agrees to recognise the victor’s supremacy and to come under his controlsubject. This is Beyond the point at which we are now able preconscious wishes attached to speak a number of desirable objects that the master (dream-work utilizes, there lies the victor) and the slave (the loser). An irony also occurs at this point unconscious wish — indestructible, infantile in its origins, the drama, howeverproduct of repression, permanently insisting in that reaching fulfilment through the only recognition which dream and the master will recognise or accept is that from an equal. The recognition other formations of the slave, falls short of this requirement since his subjection deprives him of the equality vital to a meaningful recognitionunconscious.

The master thus finds himself in a tautological position of pure self-referentiality, demanding recognition from indestructibility that Freud attributes to the slave (as unconscious wish is a creature he knows intuitively to be property of its structural position: it is the same kind as himself) and yet unable to accept the worth of that recognition since it comes from a creature whose innate inferiority he has already established. As a consequence of his victory, howevernecessary, the master does not simply execute the slavecontingent, but persists effect of a fundamental gap in his total domination by putting the slave to work producing objects for his consumption. Thus, for example, whereas subject's psyche; the master had previously eaten whatever food may have come to hand, he now demands that the slave prepare the food in such gap left by a way as to make it more desirable and more completely consumablelost satisfaction (cf. Whereas he may previously have had to eat whatever apples he found, the master now demands an apple pie seventh chapter of the slave, compelling him to produce an object The Interpretation of desire that will be completely obliterated in its enjoymentDreams; the master utterly absorbs that which he enjoys in this fashionFreud, 1953, thanks to the work of the slave in transforming the objects in the phenomenal world to render them more assimilablepp. 509-621).

The central feature Such a structural gap in the subject is of this domination is the effect a sexual order; it has on the slave. In being forced corresponds ultimately to prepare objects in the world for the master’s consumption, the slave experiences the ultimate abasement a loss of having sexual jouissance due to defer the satisfaction fact of his own desire (an unpleasant experience hitherto unknown the prohibition to the slave) which sexuality is subjected in order to gratify the desire of the masterhuman being. That This prohibition isa structural cultural necessity, he is forced to repeat the act of recognition over and over as he concedes the master’s right of desire for not a given object over his own. Even though he may be just as desirous of the apples as the mastercontingency, and its subjective correlate is the slave nonetheless must repeat the drama of recognition in recognising the superiority of the master’s desire for the apples. The repeated drama of recognition Oedipus complex — which is given its stalemate conclusion each time the master consumes the object of desire prepared by the slavea normative organization, utterly negating the material evidence of the slave’s recognition of the supremacy of his desire and re-setting the conditions for yet another repetition rather than a more or less typical set of the whole processpsychological manifestations.

The slave’s deferral model of his own desire the unconscious wish elucidated by Freud in preparing objects of desire for the master’s consumption is absolutely vital to the development of the slave’s consciousness, as he gradually overcomes his fear of nature (the fear of death that lead him to capitulate in monumental work on dreams remained his battle with the master) by altering nature through guide for the suspension rest of his desire theoretical and the application of his labour. Whereas the master exists clinical production; in pure self-referentialitypa rticular, thenit continued to inform, until the slave learns to interact with his world, elevating that which he finds around him by transforming itend, Freud's clinical interventions — interpretations and governing desire by suspending it. As the master becomes more constructions in analysis — and more dependent upon the slave’s production his rationale for the gratification of his desire, a dialectical process takes place whereby the slave comes to control the master and each moves beyond his designation in the binary master/slavethem. As This model is inseparable from the producer form of discourse that Freud created: the master’s objects rule of desirefree association, the slave gradually comes to govern the satisfaction or suspension of the master’s desiresubject's speech, and thus to control the master’s reveals his/her desire in a roundabout way. Whereas the master remains in an ignorant relation to the natural world in which he moves and desires, the slave has learned to master that world and thus to master desire. That is, in suspending his immediate urge for satisfaction (pleasure), the slave has learned how to increase the value of essential gap that desire by deferring it and displacing constitutes it. The end result of this drama is that the master expires in a well of self-referentiality, while the slave rises beyond his slavish state to master the very nature of which his fear (i.e. his fear of mortality) lead him to surrender in the primal confrontation – human community is born in the repeated suspension and deferral of desire.

This drama sets the stage for our understanding Lacan's elaboration of Lacan’s conception of desire and its central role in the formation praxis (theory and function practice) of subjectivity. The first important feature of the master/slave drama is that the nature of the relationship between the master and the slave is only nominally that of establishing a right of precedence over a given object of desire. What is more to the point is that the struggle between the two is a struggle for the other’s desire. What makes the master’s control extends over the slave gratifying, beyond the various objects his half-century of desire he produces, is that he controls the slave’s desire. In forcing the slave to transform a natural object into an object of desire, the master merely succeeds work in obtaining a desirable object (an apple piepsychoanalysis, and attempting to keep with our example). What makes this process existentially satisfying to the master is that he knows that the slave desires the apple pie as much as he does. This knowledge of the slave’s desire (whether actual abbreviate it or merely supposed) makes replace the pie all the more desirable, as it is now an emblem of the slave’s (the other’s) desire. Moreover, the more the slave must suspend his desire in order to produce necessary reading with a given object for the master’s consumption, the more the final product may summary would be said to contain the sublimation of that desire. It becomes more than itself as a result of the process by which it is transformed, effectively absorbing the slave’s suppressed imprudent and sublimated desire as added valuemisleading. The model of desire that emerges from Hegel’s dramaTherefore, and which we can only indicate some suggestions for further reading (in Lacan adopts, is thus one in which desire exceeds both demand 's works) and need. Whereas demand and need can both be met, desire is an existential condition which no object or series of objects can ever satiate; it is a "lack of being" as opposed to a "lack further lines of having" (Evans 95)enquiry.

Returning thus to desire as a constitutive feature of human existence, we find a ready expression of how the desire for the other’s desire functions in the mirror stage. As I have shown above, the infant enters the imaginary through a process A first ingredient of identification with a specular image, an "other" with which it longs to be identified. The essential component to such identification, however (and the aspect that renders it impossible), is the necessity for the other similarly to desire identification with the infant. This desire for the other’s desire is not a simple matter concept of mutual desire such as that experienced in erotic love, but Lacan's work contains a more all-encompassing demand for total recognition; the infant wants not some part (however large) of the other’s desireHegelian reference, but all of it – he or she wants according to be the be-all and end-all of the other’s which desire. The impossibility of such a total identification is what keeps subjectivity moving from object bound to object in its quest for an object that will represent and capture being recognized — even if later on Lacan emphasized the other’s desire difference between his and by possession of which the individual can absorb and utterly subjugate the other’s desireHegel's positions (Lacan, 1977 [1959], pp. Most simply put, desire is always a desire for the other’s desire; only the other’s desire for a given object transforms it from an object of demand or need into one of desire292-325).

The second aspect of desire which Lacan exploits from Hegel’s model is that But the reference to Freud's analysis of desire as an aggressive drive not simply to possess an object, but to assimilate it completely, to negate it beyond all redemption. This aspect of desire is most clearly represented revealed in the case of dream is from the apple pie, which start highly significant. Lacan emphasized that the master seeks not merely to possess, but to make a part analysis of his identity by consuming it. The act of negating the pie by eating it dream is also a display in fact an analysis of mastery over the other’s desiredreamer, that is, since a subject who tells the object is dream to some degree always also cathected with the desire of the an other (whether because he produced the object or simply because he also desires it). And while with whom the process subject is nowhere near as clearengaged in a transference-cut with objects that are not so literally consumed, the basic dynamic remains the samerelation). Just as the infant in the mirror stage perceives his or her specular image as an object In 'The function and field of desire, but also as a rival which must be encountered speech and vanquished language in the process of identification, so all desire is fundamentally aggressive and annihilating. Insofar as desire is a drive to possess, it is also always a drive to obtain the absolute right of life and death psychoanalysis' (or being and non-being1953) over the object, Lacan writes: "This is my (car, house, plant, book, sno-cone, etc.) and I’ll do what I want with it."

Clearly this is an extremely basic version :Nowhere does it appear more clearly that man's desire finds its meaning in the desire of desirethe other, and one which does not take into consideration such variations on so much because the theme as are generated by other holds the desire for objects that are desirable only because they render a more desirable object attainable or objects which can never be completely possessed by one individual and are thus subject key to distribution and distortion. Nonetheless, it provides the basis for our consideration of desire in Lacan’s conception of subjectivityobject desired, and points to the fundamentally social character of desire: "The most important point to emerge from Lacan’s phrase [that "as because the first object of man’s desire […] is essentially an object desired by someone else" (qtd. in Evans 38)] is that desire is a social product. Desire is not the private affair it appears to be but is always constituted in a dialectical relationship with recognized by the perceived desires of other subjects" . (Evans 39). And while this aspect of desire is certainly important to keep in mindLacan, it is not simply "the perceived desires of other subjects" which motivates desire1977 [1959], but the prohibition on fulfillment of desire which provides the most stimulus for its reproductionp.58)

If we recall Lacan’s reliance on That the other holds the insights of structural anthropology, and key to the dialectical nature of his thinking object desired takes on added value later in Lacan's work. Yet that desireemerges in a relationship with the other which is dialectical, we can see that the establishment is, which is embedded in discourse, is an essential property of human community and the formalisation of desire. Human desire is as dependent on its prohibition as it is on the perception desire of what is desirable. As with the slave’s necessary suspension of his desire in Other (over and above the production others who are concrete incarnations of objects for the master’s consumptionOther), not 'natural', each subject is governed by a series of prohibitions endogenous appetites or tendencies that make desire would push the ultimate motivational force subject in subjectivity. Analogous to the master’s prohibition one direction or another irrespective of his/her relations with the slave’s enjoyment, the law (inaugurated by the paternal prohibition from enjoying the mother’s body) actually "creates Other; desire is always inscribed in the first place and mediated by creating interdiction. Desire is essentially the desire to transgress, and for there to be transgression it is first necessary for there to be prohibition" language (Evans 99)cf. Interdiction effectively seals off certain objects The Four Fundamental Concepts of desire or kinds of desire as unlawfulPsycho-Analysis, thus endowing them with a mystique that allows for their conception as the final answer to desire. Tantamount to the curiosity-arousing command not to look which is an essential reference in the one locked room in a many-roomed mansionits entirety; Lacan, the law thus participates in the generation of desire as that which circulates endlessly around a prohibited core1977).

Yet simply to conceive Lacan's study of the core around which dialectical nature of desire circulates as prohibited is led to miss a vital condition of that prohibitionhis distinction between desire, the fact that it is simply the articulation of a pre-existing impossibility, since desire is by its very nature insatiableneed and demand. The important aspect of the paternal interdiction that inaugurates the infant’s traumatic accession to the symbolic order is that what the word-of-the-father interdicts is three terms describe lacks in fact an impossibility. The infant’s sought-after direct identification with the mother is impossiblesubject; the paternal interdiction only formalises this impossibility as a prohibition, covering yet it over with the compensation of symbolisation. Likewise, the prohibitive aspect of the law is merely a socially institutionalised form indispensable to identify each of the fundamental impossibility at the heart of desire. In the name of the social good a society may prohibit certain kinds or objects of desirethese lacks, but the reality is that no object can ever fulfil desireand their interrelations. The belief that desire satisfaction of vital needs is a desire for something is perhaps the greatest misperception of allsubject to demand, and one which makes even less sense if we consider the intimate link between desire, subjectivity, subject dependent on speech and language.

The fact that desire is born at the moment least noisy appeal of the infant’s accession to the symbolic order (i.e. at the same moment as the infant becomes a subject) leads Lacan to maintain that it is part and parcel of the signifying chain in its essential metonymy: "man’s desire is a metonymy. […] desire is a metonymy" (Ecrits 175). The perpetual reference of one signifier to all others already inscribed in an eternal deferral of meaning as content, as "consisting" in any one sign, as present in any way, is but another formulation of the ceaseless movement of desire. The full-blown outgrowth of the drive to identification governing the mirror stage, desire is more sophisticated than that drive, bound up with an awareness of the absence at the core of subjectivity and vulnerable to complex strategies of deferral, displacement, and sublimation in ways to which imaginary drives are impervious. Inseparable from the symbolic orderlanguage, desire is fundamentally metonymic and inheres in signification as such. Just as the signifying capacity of any individual signifier is always subverted by its failure to coincide precisely with that which it signifies, so any attempt to satisfy desire is always undercut interpreted by a residue that remains unattainable. "Although the truth about desire is present to some degree in all 'significant' others as speech, speech can never articulate the whole truth about desire; whenever speech attempts to articulate desire, there is always not as a leftover, a surplus, which exceeds speech" (Evans 36)mere cry. This innate incapacity primordial discursive circuit makes of language fully to articulate desire extends to subjectivity insofar as it, toothe infant already a speaking being, is a function subject of speech, even at the symbolic order. The surplus stage in which he/she is left over after every attempt to articulate desire, still infant. This subordination to bring it to a halt and see it coincide once and for all with some particular object or configuration of objects (or signifier or configuration of signifiers), however frustrating, is also the very lifeblood of subjectivity, as it forestalls the necessary corollary to Other through language marks the fulfillment of desire, the dissolution of the subjecthuman forever. == def ==Lacan writes:

:The phenomenology that emerges from analytic experience is certainly of a kind to demonstrate in desire the paradoxical, deviant, erratic, eccentric, even scandalous character by which it is distinguished from need [...]:Demand in itself bears on something other than the satisfactions it calls for. It is demand of a presence or of an absence — which is what is manifested in the primordial relation to the mother, pregnant with that Other to be situated short of the needs that it can satisfy.:Demand constitutes the Other as already possessing the 'privilege' of satisfying needs, that is to say, the power of depriving them of that alone by which they are satisfied [...].:In this way, demand annuls (dÈsir''aufhebt'') the particularity of everything that can be granted by transmuting it into a proof of love, and the very satisfactions that it obtains for need are reduced (''sich erniedrigt'') to the level of being no more than the crushing of the demand for love.:Thus desire is neither the appetite for satisfaction, nor the demand for love, but the difference that results from the subtraction of the first from the second, the phenomenon of their splitting (Spaltung). (Lacan, 1977 [1959], pp. 286-7)

Lacan's term, dÈsir, is the term used in This residual status of desire constitutes its essence; at this point the French translations question of Freud to translate Freud's term Wunsch, which is translated as 'wish' by Strachey in the Standard Edition. Hence English translators object of Lacan are faced with a dilemma; should they translate dÈsir by 'wish', which is closer to Freud's Wunsch, or should they translate it as 'desire', which is closer to the French term, but which lacks the allusion to Freud? All of acquires crucial importance. Lacan's English translators have opted for the latter, since the English term 'desire' conveys, like the French term, the implication considered his theory of a continuous force, which is essential to Lacan's concept. The English term also carries with it the same allusions this object to Hegel's Begierde as are carried by the French term, and thus retains the philosophical nuances which are so essential be his only original contribution to Lacan's concept of dÈsir and which make it 'a category far wider and more abstract than any employed by Freud himself' (Macey, 1995: 80)psychoanalysis.

If there is any one concept which can claim to be the very centre of Although an exaggeration in reality, Lacan's thought, it position is the concept of desire. Lacan follows Spinoza in arguing justified because with that 'desire is the essence of man' (Sll, 275; see Spinoza, 1677: 128); desire is simultaneously the heart of human existence, and the central concern of psychoanalysis. However, when Lacan talks about desire, it is not any kind of desire theory he is referring to, but always unconscious desire. This is not because Lacan sees conscious desire as unimportant, but simply because it is unconscious desire that forms the central concern of introduced in psychoanalysis. Unconscious desire is entirely sexual; 'the motives a conception of the unconscious are limited . . . to sexual desire . . . The other great generic desire, object that of hunger, is not represented' (E, 142).The aim of psychoanalytic treatment is to lead the analysand to recognise the truth about his desire. However, it is only genuinely revolutionary and that makes possible to recognise one's desire when it is articulated in speech: 'It is only once it is formulated, named in the presence a rational critique of the other, that desire, whatever it is, is recognised in the full sense notion of the term' (Sl, 183)object relations' and its clinical applications.

Hence in psychoanalysis 'For what's important is to teach Lacan emphasized was the subject to name, illusory nature of any object that appears to articulate, to bring this fulfil desire into existence' (S2, 228). Howeverwhile the gap, it the original splitting which is not a question constitutive of seeking a new means of expression for a given desire, for this would imply a expressionist theory of language. On the contrarysubject, by articulating desire is real; and it is in speech, the analysand brings it into existence:That the subject should come to recognise and to name his desire; this gap that is theefficacious action of analysis. But it isn't object a question of recognising some-thing which would be entirely given. . . . In naming it, the subject creates,brings forthobject cause of desire, a new presence in the worldinstalls itself. (S2Lacan 1977; in particular, 228-9chapter 20).

HoweverDesire requires the support of the fantasy, there is a limit to how far desire can be articulated in speech because of a fundamental which operates as its ''mise en scène'incompatibility between desire and speech' (E, 275); it is this incompatibility which explains where the irreducibility of fading subject faces the unconscious lost object thatcauses his/her desire (iLacan 1977 [1959], p.e313). This fading of the fact that subject in the unconscious is not fantastic scenario that which supports his/her desire is not known, but that which cannot be known). Although the truth about what makes desire is present opaque to some degree in all speech, speech can never articulate the whole truth about desire; whenever speech attempts to articulate desire, there subject him-/herself. Desire is always a leftovermetonymy (p. 175) because the object that causes it, a surplusconstituted as lost, makes it displace permanently, from object to object, which exceeds speechas no one object can really satisfy it.

One This permanent displacement of Lacan's most important criticisms desire follows the logic of the psychoanalytic theories of his day was unconscious; thus Lacan could say that they tended to confuse the concept of desire with is its interpretation, as it moves along the related concepts chain of DEMAND and NEEDunconscious signifiers, without ever being captured by any particular signifier (cf. In opposition to this tendencySeminar VI, 'Desire and its Interpretation'; Lacan insists on distinguishing between these three concepts. This distinction begins to emerge in his work in 1957 (see S4, 1001958-1, 125), but only crystallises in 1958 (Lacan, 1958c59).

Need is a purely biological INSTINCT, an appetite which emerges according to the requirements of In the organism and which abates completely (even if only temporarily) when satisfied. The human subjectanalytic experience, being born in a state of helplessness, is unable to satisfy its own needs, and hence depends on the Other to help it satisfy them. In order to get the Otherdesire 's help, the infant must express its needs vocally; need must be articulated in demand. The primitive demands of the infant may only be inarticulate screams, but they serve to bring the Other to minister to the infanttaken literally's needs. However, the presence of the Other soon acquires an importance in itself, an importance that goes beyond the satisfaction of need, since this presence symbolises the Other's love. Hence demand soon takes on a double function, serving both as an articulation of need and as a demand for love. However, whereas the Other can provide the objects which the subject requires to satisfy his needs, the Other cannot provide that unconditional love which it is through the subject craves. Hence even after the needs which were articulated in demand have been satisfied, the other aspect unveiling of demand, the craving for love, remains unsatisfied, and this leftover is desire. 'Desire is neither the appetite for satisfaction, nor the demand for love, but the difference signifiers that results from the subtraction of the first from the second' support it (E, 287albeit never exhausting it).Desire is thus the surplus produced by the articulation of need in demand; ''Desire begins to take shape in the margin in which demand becomes separated from need' (E, 311). Unlike a need, which that its real cause can be satisfied and which then ceases to motivate the subject until another need arisescircumscribed (Lacan, desire can never be satisfied; it is constant in its pressure1977 [1959], and eternalpp. The realisation of desire does not consist in being 'fulfilled', but in the reproduction of desire as such256-77).

Desire is the other side of the law: the contributions of psychoanalysis to ethical reflection and practice have started off by recognizing this principle (Lacan's distinction between need and desire, which lifts 1990; 1992). Desire opposes a barrier to jouissance - the concept of desire completely out jouissance of the realm of biologydrive (always partial, is strongly reminiscent of KojËve's distinction between animal and human desire; desire is shown not in relation to be distinctively human when it is directed either toward another desirethe body considered as a totality, or but to the organic function to an object which it is 'perfectly useless attached and from which it detaches), and that of the biological point of view' super-ego (KojËvewith its implacable command to enjoy; Lacan, 1947: 61977 [1959], p. 319).

It is important to distinguish between Thus, desire and the drives. Although they both belong appears to be on the field side of life preservation, as it opposes the Other lethal dimension of jouissance (as opposed to love)the partiality of the drive, desire is one whereas which disregards the requirements of the drives are many. In other wordsliving organism, and the drives are demands of the particular (partial) manifestations of a single force called desire (although there may also be desires superego - that `senseless law' - which are not manifested result in the drives: see S1l, 243self-destructive unconscious sense of guilt). There is only one object of But desire, OBJETPETITA, and this itself is represented by not without a variety structural relation with death: death at the heart of partial the speaking being's lack-in-being (manqué à l'être); death in the mortifying effect of those objects in different partial drives. The OBJET PETIT A iS not of the object towards which world that entice desire tends, but the cause of desire. Desire is not a relation to an objectinducing its alienation, but a relation to a LACKwithout ever satisfying any promise.

One There is no Sovereign Good that would sustain the `right' orientation of Lacandesire, or guarantee the subject's most oftwell-repeated formulas being. As a consequence, the ethics of psychoanalysis require that the analyst does not pretend to embody or to deliver any Sovereign Good; it rather prescribes for the analyst that `the only thing of which one can be guilty is: 'manof having given ground relative to one's desire is the desire of the Other' (SllLacan, 1992, 235p. 319). This can be understood in many complementary ways, of which the following are the most important.

1. Desire is essentially The analyst's desire of the Other, 's a desireto obtain absolute difference', which means both desire to be is the original Lacanian concept that defines the object position of another's desirethe analyst in analytic discourse, and represents a culmination of his elucidationof the function of desire for recognition by another. in psychoanalysis (Lacan takes this idea from Hegel, via KojËve1977, who states:p. 276; 1991).

Desire This position is human only if the one desiresstructural, constitutive of analytic discourse - not the body, but the Desire a psychological state of the other . . analyst. that It is to sayhis/her lack-in-being, if he wants to be rather than any 'desiredpositive' or mode of being that orients the analyst'loved', ors direction of the treatment (Lacan, rather1977 [1959], 'recognised' in his human valuep. 230). . . In other words, all human, anthropogenetic Desire . . . is, finallyThis means that the analyst cannot incarnate an ideal for the analysand, and that he/she occupies a function position of semblant of the cause of desire for (Lacan, 1991; 1998). Only in this way may the analyst'recognitions desire become the instrument of the analysand's access to his/her own desire. (KojËve, 1947: 6)

KojËve goes on to argue (still following Hegel) that in order to achieve the desired recognitionReferencesFreud, the subject must risk his own life in a struggle for pure prestige S. (see MASTER1953)[1900a] The Interpretation of Dreams. That desire is essentially desire to be the object Standard Edition of another's desire is clearly illustrated in the first 'time' Complete Psychological Works of the Oedipus complexSigmund Freud, when the subject desires to be the phallus for the motherVols 4 & 5. London: Hogarth Press.

2#Lacan, J. It is qua Other that the subject desires (E1958-59) `Le désir et son interpretation' (seven sessions, 312ed. by J.-A. Miller). Ornicar? 24 (1981):7-31; 25 (1982): that is, the subject desires from 13-36; 26/27 (1983):7-44. The final three sessions appeared as `Desire and the point Interpretation of view Desire in Hamlet'. Yale French Studies 55/56 (1977):11-52. There are unedited transcripts of anotherthe whole seminar available in French and English. #Lacan, J. (1977) [1959] Écrits: A Selection. London: Tavistock.#Lacan, J. (1977) The effect Four Fundamental Concepts of this is that Psycho-Analysis. London: Tavistock.# Lacan, J. (1990) `Kant with Sade'the object of man. October 51. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press.# Lacan, J. (1991) Le Séminaire, Livre XVII, L's desire envers de la psychanalyse, 1969-1970. Paris: Seuil. # Lacan, J. is essentially an object desired by someone else' (1992) The Seminar, Book VII, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-1960. New York: W.W. Norton; London: Routledge.# Lacan, 1951bJ. (1998) The Seminar, Book XX, Encore, 1972-1973, On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge. New York:W.W. Norton. Leonardo S. Rodriguez

12). What makes an object desirable =====''Unconscious'' Desire=====<!-- If there is not any intrinsic quality one concept which can claim to be the very center of [[Lacan]]'s thought, it is the thing concept of [[desire]]. -->[[Lacan]] follows [[Spinoza]] in itself but simply the fact arguing that it "[[desire]] is desired by anotherthe essence of man. The desire "<ref>{{S11}} p. 275</ref> [[Desire]] is simultaneously the heart of the Other is thus what makes objects equivalent [[human]] [[existence]] and exchangeable; this 'tends to diminish the special significance central concern of [[psychoanalysis]]. However, when [[Lacan]] talks about [[desire]], it is not any one particular objectkind of [[desire]] he is referring to, but always ''[[unconscious]]'' [[desire]]. This is not because [[Lacan]] sees [[conscious]] [[desire]] as unimportant, but at the same time simply because it brings into view is [[unconscious]] [[desire]] that forms the existence central concern of objects without number' (Lacan, 1951b: 12)[[psychoanalysis]]. This idea too <!-- [[Unconscious]] [[desire]] is taken from KojËve's reading of Hegelentirely [[sexuality|sexual]]; KojËve argues that 'Desire directed toward a natural object is human only to the extent that it is <blockquote>"mediated" by the Desire motives of another directed towards the same object: it is human unconscious are limited . . . to sexual desire what others . . . The other great generic desire, because they desire it' (KojËvethat of hunger, 1947: 6)is not represented."<ref>{{E}} p.142</ref></blockquote> -->

=====Truth and Desire=====The reason for this goes back [[aim]] of [[psychoanalytic]] [[treatment]] is to lead the former point [[analysand]] to recognize the [[truth]] about human his [[desire being ]]. It is only possible to recognize one's [[desire for recognition; by desiring that which another desires]] when it is articulate in [[speech]]. <!-- <blockquote>"It is only once it is formulated, I can make named in the [[presence]] of the [[other recognise my right to possess ]], that object[[desire]], whatever it is, and thus make is recognised in the full sense of the other recognise my superiority over him (KojËve, 1947: 40)term."<ref>{{S1}} p.183</ref></blockquote> -->

This universal feature of desire is especially evident =====Existence=====Hence in hysteria; the hysteric is one who sustains another person[[psychoanalysis]], "what's desireimportant is to teach the [[subject]] to name, to articulate, converts another's to bring this [[desire ]] into her own (e[[existence]].g"<ref>{{S2}} p. Dora desires Frau K because she identifies with Herr K228</ref> However, thus appropriating his perceived it is not a question of seeking a new means of expression for a given [[desire; S4]], for this would imply a expressionist theory of [[language]]. On the contrary, 138; see Freudby articulating [[desire]] in [[speech]], 1905e)the [[analysand]] brings it into [[existence]]. Hence what is important (The [[analysand]], by articulating [[desire]] in the analysis of a hysteric is [[speech]], (does not simply give expression to find out the object of her a pre-existing [[desire ]] but to discover the place from which she desires (the subject with whom she identifiesrather)brings that [[desire]] into [[existence]].)

3. Desire <blockquote>"That the [[subject]] should come to recognise and to name his [[desire]]; that is desire for the Other (playing on the ambiguity efficacious action of [[analysis]]. But it isn't a question of the French preposition de)[[recognising]] something which would be entirely given. ... The fundamental desire is In naming it, the incestuous desire for the mother[[subject]] creates, brings forth, a new [[presence]] in the primordial Other (S7, 67)world."<ref>{{S2}} p.228-9</ref></blockquote>

4. Desire is always 'the desire for something else' (EHowever, 167), since it there is impossible a limit to how far [[desire what one already has. The object ]] can be articulated in [[speech]] because of a fundamental "incompatibility between [[desire ]] and [[speech]];"<ref>{{E}} p. 275</ref> it is continually deferred, this incompatibility which explains the irreducibility of the [[unconscious]] (i.e. the fact the the [[unconscious]] is why desire not that which ''is a METONYMY (Enot known'', 175but that which ''cannot be known'').

5. Desire emerges originally "Although the [[truth]] about [[desire]] is present to some degree in all [[speech]], [[speech]] can never articulate the field of the Otherwhole [[truth]] about [[desire]]; i.e. in the unconscious. The most important point whenever [[speech]] attempts to emerge from Lacan's phrase is that articulate [[desire ]], there is always a leftover, a social product[[surplus]], which exceeds [[speech]]. Desire is not the private affair it appears to be but is always constituted in a dialectical relationship with the perceived desires of other subjects"<ref>{{Evans}} p.36</ref>

The first person =====Criticism=====One of [[Lacan]]'s most important criticisms of the [[psychoanalysis|psychoanalytic theories]] of his day was that they tended to occupy confuse the place concept of [[desire]] with the Other is the motherrelated concepts of [[demand]] and [[need]]. In opposition to this tendency, [[Lacan]] insists on distinguishing between these three concepts. This distinction begins to emerge in his work in 1957, and at first the child is at the mercy of her desire<ref>{{S4}} pp. It is 100-1, 125</ref>, but only when crystallises in 1958.<ref>{{L}} (1958c) "[[The Signification of the Father articulates desire with Phallus|La signification du phallus]]." ''[[Écrits]]''. Paris: Seuil, 1966: 685-95 ["[[The Signification of the law by castrating the mother that the subject is freed from subjection to the whims Phallus|The signification of the motherphallus]]". Trans. [[Alan Sheridan]] ''[[Écrits: A Selection]]''s desire (see CASTRATION COMPLEX).== def ==London: Tavistock, 1977; New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1977: 281-91].</ref>

=====Need=====[[Need]] is a purely [[biological]] [[instinct]], an appetite which emerges according to the requirements of the organism and which abates completely (even if only temporarily) when satisfied. The [[human]] [[subject]], being born in a state of [[helplessness]], is unable to [[satisfy]] its own [[need]]s, and hence depends on the [[Other]] to help it [[satisfy]] them. In order to get the [[Other]]'s help, the [[infant]] must express its [[Lacanneed]]ian s vocally; need must be articulated in [[psychoanalysisdemand]]. The primitive [[demand]]s of the [[infant]] may only be inarticulate screams, but they serve to bring the term [[Other]] to minister to the [[infant]]'''desire''' designates s [[need]]s. However, the [[presence]] of the impossible relation [[Other]] soon acquires an importance in itself, an importance that goes beyond the [[satisfaction]] of [[need]], since this [[presence]] [[symbolize]]s the [[Other]]'s [[love]]. Hence [[demand]] soon takes on a double function, serving both as an articulation of [[subject (philosophy)|subjectneed]] and as a [[demand]] has with for [[objet petit alove]]. According However, whereas the [[Other]] can provide the [[object]]s which the [[subject]] requires to Lacansatisfy his [[need]]s, desire proper (the [[Other]] cannot provide that unconditional [[love]] which the [[subject]] craves. Hence even after the [[need]]s which were articulated in contrast with [[demand (psychoanalysis)|]] have been satisfied, the other aspect of [[demand]]) can never be fulfilled, the craving for [[love]], remains unsatisfied, and this leftover is [[desire]].

=====Demand=====[[Desire ]] is thus the Desire [[surplus]] produced by the articulation of the Other[[need]] in [[demand]];

It is on the basis of this fundamental understanding of identity that Lacan maintained throughout his career that desire is the desire of the Other. What is meant by him in this formulation is not the triviality that humans desire others, when they sexually desire (an observation which is not universally true). Again developing Freud's theorisation of sexuality, Lacan's contention is rather that what psychoanalysis reveals is that human-beings need to learn how and what to desire. Lacanian theory does not deny that infants are always born into the world with basic biological needs that need constant or periodic satisfaction. Lacan's stress, however, is that, from a very early age, the child’s attempts <blockquote>"Desire begins to satisfy these needs become caught up take shape in the dialectics of its exchanges with others. Because its sense of self is only ever garnered from identifying with the images of these others (or itself margin in the mirror, as a kind of other), Lacan argues that it demonstrably belongs to humans to desire- directly- as or through another or others. We get a sense of his meaning when we consider such social phenomena as fashion. As the squabbling of children more readily testifies, it is fully possible for an object to become desirable for individuals because they perceive that others desire it, such that when these others' desire is withdrawn, the object also loses its allure. Lacan articulates this 'decentring' of desire when he contends that what has happened to the biological needs of the individual is that they have become inseparable from, and importantly subordinated to, the vicissitudes of its which [[demand for the recognition and love of other people. Events as apparently 'natural' as the passing or holding back of stool, he remarks in Ecrits, become episodes in the chronicle of the child's relationship with its parents, expressive of its compliance or rebellion. A hungry child may even refuse to eat food if it perceives that this food is offered less as a token of love than one of its parents' dissatisfaction or impatience.In this light, Lacan's important recourse to game theory also ]] becomes explicable. For game theory involves precisely the attempt to formalise the possibilities available to individuals in situations where their decisions concerning their wants can in principle both affect and be affected by the decisions of othersseparated from need. As Lacan's article in the Ecrits on the "Direction of the Treatment" spells out, he takes it that the analytic situation, as theorised by Freud around the notion of transference (see Part 2), is precisely such a situation. In that essay, Lacan focuses on the dream of the butcher's wife in Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. The said 'butcher’s wife’ thought that she had had a dream which was proof of the invalidity of Freud's theory that dreams are always encoded wish-fulfilments. As Freud comments, however, this dream becomes explicable when one considers how, after a patient has entered into analysis, her wishes are constructed (at least in part) in relation to the perceived wishes of the analyst. In this case, at least one of the wishes expressed by the dream was the woman's wish that Freud’s desire (for his theory to be correct) be thwarted. In the same way, Lacan details how the deeper unconscious wish expressed in the manifest content of the dream (which featured the woman attempting to stage a dinner party with only one piece of smoked salmon) can only be comprehended as the coded fulfilment of a desire that her husband would not fulfil her every wish, and leave her with an unsatisfied desire<ref>{{E}} p.311</ref></blockquote>

=====Alexandre Kojève=====[[Lacan]]'s distinction between [[need]] and [[desire]], which lifts the concept of [[desire]] completely out of the realm of [[biology]], is strongly reminiscent of [[Kojève]]'s distinction between [[animal]] and [[human]] [[desire]]; [[desire]] is shown to be distinctively [[human]] when it is directed either toward another [[desire]], or to an object which is "perfectly useless from the [[biology|biological]] point of view."<ref>[[Alexandre Kojève|Kojève, Alexandre]] (1947 [1933-39]) ''Introduction to the Reading of Hegel''. Trans. James H. Nichols Jr. New York and London: Basic Books, 1969: 6</ref> =====Desire and Drive=====It is important to distinguish between [[desire]] and the [[drive]]s. Although they both belong to the field of the [[Other]] (as opposed to [[love]]), [[desire]] is one whereas the [[drive]]s are many. In other words, the [[drive]]s are the particular (partial) manifestations of a single force called [[desire]] (although there may also be [[desire]]s which are not manifested in the [[drive]]s).<ref>{{S11}} p. 243</ref> There is only one [[object]] of [[desire]], [[object (petit) a]], and this is represented by a variety of partial objects in different partial [[drive]]s. The [[object (petit) a]] is not the [[object]] towards which [[desire]] tends, but the [[cause]] of [[desire]]. [[Desire]] is not a relation to an [[object]], but a relation to a [[lack]]. =====Desire of the Other=====One of [[Lacan]]'s most oft-repeated formulas is: "man's desire is the desire of the Other."<ref>{{S11}} p. 235</ref> This can be understood in many complementary ways, of which the following are the most important. =====More=====1. [[Desire]] is essentially "desire of the Other's desire", which means both [[desire]] to be the [[object]] of another's [[desire]], and [[desire]] for recognition by another.  [[Lacan]] takes this idea from [[Hegel]], via [[Kojève]], who states: <blockquote>Desire is human only if the one desires, not the body, but the Desire of the other . . . that is to say, if he wants to be 'desired' or 'loved', or, rather, 'recognised' in his human value. . . . In other words, all human, anthropogenetic Desire . . . is, finally, a function of the desire for 'recognition'.<ref>[[Alexandre Kojève|Kojève, Alexandre]] (1947 [1933-39]) ''Introduction to the Reading of Hegel''. Trans. James H. Nichols Jr. New York and London: Basic Books, 1969: 6</ref></blockquote> =====Object of Another's Desire=====[[Kojève]] goes on to argue (still following [[Hegel]]) that in order to achieve the [[desire]]d recognition, the [[subject]] must risk his own life in a struggle for pure prestige (see [[master]]). That [[desire]] is essentially [[desire]] to be the [[object]] of another's [[desire]] is clearly illustrated in the first 'time' of the [[Oedipus complex]], when the [[subject]] desires to be the [[phallus]] for the [[mother]]. =====Two=====2. It is qua Other that the subject desires:<ref>{{E}} p. 312</ref> that is, the [[subject]] [[desire]]s from the point of view of another. The effect of this is that "the object of man's desire . . . is essentially an object desired by someone else."<ref>{{L}} "[[Some Reflections on the Ego]]." ''International Journal of Psychoanalysis''. Vol. 34. 1953[1951b]: 12</ref> What makes an [[object]] desirable is not any intrinsic quality of the thing in itself but simply the fact that it is [[desire]]d by another.  The [[desire]] of the [[Other]] is thus what makes objects equivalent and exchangeable; this "tends to diminish the special significance of any one particular object, but at the same time it brings into view the existence of objects without number."<ref>{{L}} "[[Some Reflections on the Ego]]." ''International Journal of Psychoanalysis''. Vol. 34. 1953[1951b]: 12</ref>  This idea too is taken from [Category[Kojève]]'s reading of [[Hegel]]; [[Kojève]] argues that: <blockquote>"Desire directed toward a natural object is human only to the extent that it is 'mediated' by the Desire of another directed towards the same object: it is human to desire what others desire, because they desire it."<ref>[[Alexandre Kojève|Kojève, Alexandre]] (1947 [1933-39]) ''Introduction to the Reading of Hegel''. Trans. James H. Nichols Jr. New York and London: Basic Books, 1969: 6</ref></blockquote> <blockquote>The reason for this goes back to the former point about human desire being desire for recognition; by desiring that which another desires, I can make the other recognise my right to possess that object, and thus make the other recognise my superiority over him.<ref>[[Alexandre Kojève|Kojève, Alexandre]] (1947 [1933-39]) ''Introduction to the Reading of Hegel''. Trans. James H. Nichols Jr. New York and London: Basic Books, 1969:40</ref></blockquote> =====Hysteria=====This universal feature of [[desire]] is especially evident in [[hysteria]]; the [[hysteric]] is one who sustains another person's [[desire]], converts another's [[desire]] into her own (e.g. Dora desires Frau K because she identifies with Herr K, thus appropriating his perceived desire).<ref>{{S4}} p. 138; {{F}} (1905e) "[[{{FB}}|Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria]]." [[SE]] VII, 3.</ref> Hence what is important in the [[analysis]] of a [[hysteric]] is not to find out the object of her desire but to discover the place from which she [[desire]]s (the [[subject]] with whom she identifies). =====Desire for the Other=====# [[Desire]] is [[desire]] ''for'' the [[Other]] (playing on the ambiguity of the French preposition ''de''). The fundamental [[desire]] is the incestuous [[desire]] for the [[mother]], the primordial [[Other]].<ref>{{S7}} p. 67</ref> # [[Desire]] is always "the desire for something else,"<ref>{{E}} p. 167</ref> since it is impossible to [[desire]] what one already has. The [[object]] of [[desire]] is continually deferred, which is why [[desire]] is a [[metonymy]].<ref>{{E}} p. 175</ref> # [[Desire]] emerges originally in the field of the [[Other]]; i.e. in the [[unconscious]].  =====Social Product=====The most important point to emerge from [[Lacan]]'s phrase is that [[desire]] is a social product. [[Desire]] is not the private affair it appears to be but is always constituted in a [[dialectic|dialectical relationship]] with the perceived [[desire]]s of other [[subject]]s. =====(M)other=====The first person to occupy the place of the [[Other]] is the [[mother]], and at first the child is at the mercy of her [[desire]]. It is only when the [[Father]] articulates [[desire]] with the [[law]] by castrating the [[mother]] that the [[subject]] is freed from subjection to the whims of the [[mother]]'s [[desire]]. ==See Also=={{See}}* [[Need]]||* [[Drive]]||* [[Demand]]{{Also}} ==References==<div style="font-size:11px" class="references-small"><references/></div> {{OK}}[[Category:TermsSymbolic]][[Category:ConceptsReal]][[Category:PsychoanalysisMess]]