Subject of the Drive

In his seminar on The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964), Jacques Lacan reread Freud's essay "Drives and their Vicissitudes" (1915c) in order to emphasize that the four components of the drive—pressure, object, aim, and source—are not natural phenomena: the drive is a montage. The constancy of the drive's pressure differentiates it from vital needs, which vary according to their own rhythms (Lacan, p. 171). Thus hunger is not the same as the oral drive. Satisfaction does not consist in fulfilling a need, but in...