"[[Need]]" ([[Fr]]. ''[[besoin]]'')
==Need, Demand and Desire==
Around 1958, [[Lacan]] develops an important distinction between three terms:
* [[need]],
* [[demand]] and
* [[desire]].
===Need and Instinct===
In the context of this distinction, "[[need]]" comes close to what [[Freud]] referred to as "[[instinct]]" (''[[Instinkt]]''); that is, a purely ''[[biological]]'' concept opposed to the realm of the [[drive]] (''[[Trieb]]'').
===Need and Demand===
[[Lacan]] bases this distinction on the fact that in order to satisfy his [[needs]] the infant must articulate them in [[language]]; in other words, the infant must articulate his [[needs]] in a "[[demand]]".
However, in doing so, something else is introduced which causes a split between [[need]] and [[demand]]; this is the fact that every [[demand]] is not only an articulation of [[need]] but also an (unconditional) [[demand]] for [[love]].
Now, althought the other to whom the [[demand]] is addressed (in the first instance, the [[mother]]) can and may supply the [[object]] which satisfies the infant'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 and Desire===
[[Need]] is thus an intermittent tension which arises for purely organic reasons and which is discharged entirely by the specific action corresponding to the particular [[need]] in question.
[[Desire]], on the other hand, is a constand force which can never be satisfied, the constant 'pressure' which underlies the [[drives]].
===Hypothesis===
This account presents in chronological terms what is in fact a question of [[structure]].
In truth, it is not the case that there first exists a [[subject]] of pure [[need]] 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 to 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 mythical [[subject]]; even the paradigmatic [[need]] of hunger never exists as a pure [[biological]] given, but is marked by the [[structure]] of [[desire]].
Nevertheless, this hypothesis is useful to [[Lacan]] for maintaining his theses about the radical divergence between human desire and all natural or biological categories.
==See Also==
* [[Demand]]
* [[Desire]]
* [[Drive]]
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=={{Encore}}* : [[DemandNecessity]], 59, 94 * : [[Desire]]* [[DriveNeeds]], 51
