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<!-- 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 [[French]] term, but which [[lacks]] the allusion to [[Freud]]? All of [[Lacan]]'s [[English]] translators have opted for the latter, since the [[English]] term "[[desire]]" conveys, like the [[French]] term, the implication of a ''continuous force'', which is essential to [[Lacan]]'s concept. The [[English]] term also carries with it the same allusions to [[Hegel]]'s ''[[Begierde]]'' as are carried by the [[French]] term, and thus retains the [[philosophical]] nuances which are so essential to [[Lacan]]'s concept of ''[[désir]]'' and which make it "a [[category]] far wider and more abstract than any employed by [[Freud]] himself." -->
By shifting the object of study from the imagery of the [[manifest]] [[content]] of the [[dream]] to its unconscious determinants in the dreaming subject, Freud unveiled the [[structure]] of both the dream and [[The Subject|the subject]]. Beyond the [[preconscious]] wishes attached to a [[number]] of desirable [[objects]] that the dream-[[work]] utilizes, there lies the unconscious wish — indestructible, [[infantile]] in its origins, the product of [[repression]], permanently insisting in reaching fulfilment through the dream and the other [[formations]] of the unconscious.
The indestructibility that Freud attributes to the unconscious wish is a property of its [[structural]] [[position]]: it is the necessary, not [[contingent]], effect of a fundamental gap in the subject's [[psyche]]; the gap [[left]] by a lost satisfaction (cf. the seventh chapter of The [[Interpretation]] of [[Dreams]]; Freud, 1953, pp. 509-621).
Such a structural gap in the subject is of a [[sexual]] [[order]]; it corresponds ultimately to a [[loss]] of sexual jouissance due to the fact of the [[prohibition]] to which [[sexuality]] is subjected in the human [[being]]. This prohibition is a structural [[cultural]] [[necessity]], not a [[contingency]], and its [[subjective]] correlate is the [[Oedipus]] [[complex]] — which is a [[normative]] organization, rather than a more or less typical set of [[psychological]] manifestations.
The [[model]] of the unconscious wish elucidated by Freud in his monumental work [[On Dreams|on dreams ]] remained his [[guide]] for the rest of his theoretical and clinical production; in pa rticular, it continued to inform, until the end, Freud's clinical interventions — [[interpretations]] and constructions in analysis — and his rationale for [[them]]. This model is inseparable from the [[form]] of [[discourse]] that Freud created: the rule of free [[association]], the subject's speech, reveals his/her desire and the essential gap that constitutes it.
Lacan's elaboration of the praxis ([[theory]] and [[practice]]) of desire extends over his half-century of work in psychoanalysis, and attempting to abbreviate it or replace the necessary [[reading]] with a [[summary]] would be imprudent and misleading. Therefore, we can only indicate some suggestions for further reading (in Lacan's works) and further lines of enquiry.
: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)
This residual status of desire constitutes its [[essence]]; at this point the question of the [[Object of Desire|object of desire ]] acquires crucial importance. Lacan considered his theory of this object to be his only original contribution to psychoanalysis.
Although an exaggeration in [[reality]], Lacan's position is justified because with that theory he introduced in psychoanalysis a conception of the object that is genuinely revolutionary and that makes possible a [[rational]] critique of the [[notion]] of '[[object relations]]' and its clinical applications.
of the function of desire in psychoanalysis (Lacan, 1977, p. 276; 1991).
This position is structural, constitutive of analytic discourse - not a psychological [[state]] of the analyst. It is his/her lack-in-being, rather than any 'positive' mode of being that orients the analyst's [[Direction of the Treatment|direction of the treatment ]] (Lacan, 1977 [1959], p. 230). This means that the analyst cannot incarnate an [[ideal]] for the analysand, and that he/she occupies a position of [[semblant]] of the cause of desire (Lacan, 1991; 1998). Only in this way may the analyst's desire become the [[instrument]] of the analysand's access to his/her own desire.
See also: [[jouissance]], [[subject]]
