Need

Lacan develops an important distinction between three terms: need, demand and desire.

In the context of this distinction, 'need' (besoin) comes close to what Freud referred to as instinct (Instinkt); that is, a purely biological concept opposed to the realm of the drive (Trieb).

The child, in order to satisfy his or her needs, must articulate his or her needs in language; in other words, the child must articulate his or her needs in a 'demand'.

However, every demand is not only an articulation of need but also an (unconditional) demand for love.

The other to whom the demand is addressed (the mother) can and may supply the object which satisfies the child's need, she is never in a position to answer the demand for love unconditionally, because she too is divided.

The result of this split between need and demand is an insatiable leftover, which is desire itself.

Need is thus an intermittent tension which arises for purely organic reasons and which is discharged entirely by the specific action corresponding ot the particular need in question. Desire, on the other hand, is a constant force which can never be satisfied, the constant 'pressure' which underlies the drives.

-- It is not the case that there first exists a subject of pur eneed which then attempts to articulate that need in language, since the distinction between pure need and its articulation in demand only exists from the moment of its articulation, by which time it is impossible ot determine what that pure need could have been. The concept of a pre-linguistic need is thus merely a hypothesis, and the subject of this pure need is a mythicla subject.

See Also

• Demand
• Desire
• Drive