Man’s desire is the [[desire]] of [[the Other]]
Desire is essentially a [[desire for recognition]] from this ‘Other’
Desire is for the thing that we suppose the Other desires, which is to say, [[the thing that the Other lacks]].We can understand this ‘other’ in two ways: first, as indicated with a lower case o, the other person, our counterpart, our semblable; second, as the Other with a capital O, a more ‘otherly’ other, the essential feature of which being that although we never know quite what their desire is, we are on a constant quest to find an answer. This big Other might be another person in their essentially [[enigmatic]] dimension; or it might be the assumed virtues, morals and ideals of our culture and upbringing. One of the reasons why it is useful to put the capital O on this maxim of man’s desire being the desire of the Other is that it renders this ‘otherness’ of the Other more stark.It is less a question of what we desire as much as it is that we be recognised. Moreover, Lacan believes that this dependence on the other for recognition is responsible for structuring not only our desires, but even our [[drives]].Desire full stop is always the desire of [[the Other]]. Which basically means that we are always [[asking the Other]] what he desires“You see, the object of [[desire]] is the cause of the desire [object a], and this object that is the cause of desire is the object of the drive – that is to say, the object around which the drive turns…. It is not that desire clings to the object of the drive – desire moves around it, in so far as it is agitated in the drive.” (Seminar XI, p.243).Lacan makes the question of what the (m)Other desires – [[‘Che vuoi?‘]], ‘What do you want?’ – a kind of rites of passage for the infant, the answer to which will give the him a place from where he can answer the same question put to himself – what do I desire? Later in life this question might be echoed in a psychoanalysis as the patient lies on the couch asking himself what the analyst wants of him. Even if he has succeeded in constructing his own desire from the answer he has given to the question of the Other’s desire, the fact that his desire has been premised on the Other’s desire means that there will forever be a world of difference between what he desires and what he actually wants. The two will never be in the same place at the same time.
There results a gap between unconscious desire and the desire of your ego (what you might be said to want), as expressed in [[demand]].Desire is produced where a demand goes further than demanding what is needed. There he presents [[desire]] as sitting in the no-man’s-land between need and the way that [[need]] is articulated in demand.So the problem of the infant is to find an answer to the Che vuoi?, to the (m)Other’s [[enigmatic]] desire, and carve out a place for his own desire in the gap he finds in the Other. Lacan refers to this as a “test constituted by desire” (Ecrits, 693) and he gives a very particular name to the presumed object of the mother’s desire, to the thing which she herself lacks: [[the phallus]].The phallus is not the object of desire, because it remains [[veiled]] and enigmatic, but rather it is like an indicator that points to the fact that there is something beyond the (m)Other that she does not have.
In using this term Lacan intends to invoke the full weight of its Freudian connotation – that is, as the penis – but to go one better and make it the very [[signifier]] of desire, a kind of permanent marker of this fundamental lack, a signifier that there is something missing from the (m)Other.We never fully know exactly what the Other desires or why it desires it, or in what way we ourselves might be implicated. For the subject, desire is thus a constant [[process of questioning|asking the Other]] what the Other has or desires to have.
Indeed, it is not always clear what the Other wants. When we call our desires our own what we really mean is only that we have succeeded in [[seeking out the gaps]] in the desire of the Other, and carving out a space for ourselves there.Lacan is crucial about [[the phallus]] is that it remain veiled – we don’t actually know what it is. As such, it does not have the status of an object. It is only the fact that it is veiled that makes it so potent a [[signifier]] for desire, because by being veiled it suggests both that there is something there, but that it is not clear what it is.There is in reality no difference between the signifier of desire and desire itself.
“Such is woman concealed behind her veil: it is the absence of the penis that makes her the phallus, the object of [[desire]]. Evoke this absence in a more precise way by having her wear a cute fake one under a fancy dress, and you, or rather she, will have plenty to tell us about: the effect is 100 percent guaranteed, for men who don’t beat around the bush, that is” (Ecrits, 825). You express your needs in the form of a demand, but in the very process of making that demand something of the need is left out or leftover from the need.