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One consequence of Lacan’s placing loss at the core of the subject’s being is that it subverts any idea of the infant as a purely natural creature living outside of culture. The idea of an instinctual infant expressing innate patterns of behavior, including attachment patterns, is far from Lacan’s idea of the subject as inscribed in culture from the beginning of its existence. Theories of conflict in psychoanalysis generally focus on the experience of pleasure vs. unpleasure and efforts to resolve the conflicts between the two. Necessarily this implies a theory of ‘wishing,’ of motivation, intention, or desire. The latter term, desire, and indeed the conceptual relationship between desire and wish , play fundamental roles in Lacanian thought and shed light on the implicit function of intrapsychic conflict within that thought. The French word désir is an adequate translation of the German Wunsch , the word generally used by Freud and translated as wish in English. However, désir also renders the German Begierde (Begehren) which is the word that generally appears in Hegel’s texts, a more complex one than Wunsch, and one suggesting an intensity beyond that of a wish, i.e., passion, greed, or lust. Both Freud’s Wunsch and Hegel’s Begierde are connoted by Lacan’s désir and both could be represented in English by the word desire but not as well by the English word wish . In considering the contrasting terms wish and desire , we encounter differences regarding the function of phantasy and indeed the unconscious itself. Brenner’s idea that the original wishes are essentially realistic and only become repressed phantasies out of conflict with more powerful wishes, i.e. for avoiding disapproval, etc. is entirely different from Lacan’s idea of the inception of desire as unconscious phantasy: unconscious phantasy that may be conveyed by various discreet wishes. The divided subject requests help from the analyst, he/she asks for help to reduce painful or unpleasant experience. However, the analysis proceeds to address what else these requests may mean. To do otherwise, to turn immediately toward an effort to reduce the unpleasure, forecloses the possibility of analysis. The inescapable conclusion is that there is some other wish in this request for help, and perhaps a wish that is oriented around the idea of the all-knowing analyst and the gifts that the knowing analyst will bestow (i.e., in transference). This other wish reflects the division between the (conscious) request and the (unconscious) desire. All clinical psychoanalytic work occurs on the axis of this division. In French, a request is une demande. Hence this division in the subject of psychoanalysis tends to be addressed in the English translations of Lacanian thought as that between demand and desire. The distinction between demand and desire is similar to the familiar distinction between manifest and latent content but it is not exactly the same. For Lacan, the manifest content of the demand is less important than its logic. The demand has the logic of an imagined solution to the lack: “If I could have what I want I would be complete.” Because the wish carries the implication of an imagined wholeness, it is narcissistic in form. It presumes an imaginary repair for the imagined injury. That is why it is frustrated in a successful analysis. In frustrating this demand for an imaginary solution, the analyst directs the treatment instead toward the expression of new metaphors of the lack, new expressions of desire. There is a resonance in this view both with Hans Loewald’s (1960) notion of the new object in analysis and perhaps with the familiar ego psychological notion about the creation of new compromise formations.
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