Desire of the Other

Desire of the Other (French: désir de l'Autre, matheme: $d(A)$ or $\mathbf{𝐃}$) is a foundational concept in the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, designating the structural condition of human Desire as mediated by the Other. It articulates the subject’s desire not simply as desire for an object or fulfillment, but as a desire shaped, called into being, and sustained by the desire of the Other. Unlike biological Need or symbolic Demand, which are articulated directly to or through the Other, desire is fundamentally linked to a constitutive Lack within the subject and the enigmatic position of the Other’s desire.

The formula $d(A)$ expresses this entanglement: desire as always a response to, or organized around, the desire *of* the Other—not merely what the Other wants, but the very fact that the Other desires. Lacan formalizes this within the topology of the Graph of Desire, demonstrating how the subject is caught in an alienated relation to its own desire, insofar as this desire is mediated by the signifiers of the Other’s speech and by the presence or absence of symbolic Castration.

Lacan develops this concept across multiple seminars, tracing its evolution from the enigmatic maternal desire (the first primordial Other) to the structurally barred Other ($\overline{A}$), whose lack inaugurates the possibility of desire as such. The interplay between $d(A)$ and the Objet a—the cause rather than the object of desire—anchors Lacan’s shift from a phenomenology of desire to its structural and topological dimensions.

History and Genealogy

The genealogy of the concept of Desire of the Other unfolds across Lacan's appropriation and transformation of several theoretical traditions, beginning with Sigmund Freud’s concept of the Wunsch (wish) and continuing through G.W.F. Hegel’s dialectic of recognition, as mediated by Alexandre Kojève's influential reading.

Freud’s earliest theorizations of wish-fulfillment in the Interpretation of Dreams (1900) established desire as unconscious, conflictual, and shaped by repression. While Freud did not yet formalize desire’s social mediation, he foregrounded its constitutive dependence on absence and displacement.

Lacan radicalizes this in the 1950s by re-reading Freud through structural linguistics and Hegelian recognition. In his 1957 seminar on The Formations of the Unconscious (Seminar V), Lacan first formalizes the matheme $d(A)$ to emphasize that the subject desires insofar as it is desired—or more precisely, insofar as it seeks to know what the Other desires.

Lacan's engagement with Kojève’s reading of Hegel introduces the idea that desire is inherently mediated by the desire of another consciousness: to desire is to desire recognition, to be desired as desiring. This emphasis on intersubjective mediation is a crucial precursor to Lacan’s own conceptualization of the Other as the locus of language and symbolic law.

In the 1960s, particularly in Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964), Lacan elaborates the structural role of $d(A)$ in the Graph of Desire and links it to symbolic castration ($\mathrm{\Phi }$) and the Name-of-the-Father (Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle Nom-du-Père} ). The Other is no longer simply the mother or the partner in desire, but the very place of the signifier—always already barred ($\overline{A}$) and lacking.

Psychoanalytic Significance: Structure and Formalization

Lacan’s formalization of the desire of the Other hinges on a set of structural distinctions between Need, Demand, and Desire, developed most clearly in Seminar IV: The Object Relation and Seminar V.

• Need refers to biological urges, which are satisfied directly.
• Demand is need articulated in language, addressed to the Other.
• Desire emerges from the gap between need and demand—it is what remains unsatisfied, the excess, and is thus never fully articulable.

This gap is the space in which $d(A)$ arises. It is not merely the subject’s own desire ($d$), but desire mediated and structured by the desire of the Other: $d(A)$. The subject’s fundamental question becomes: "What does the Other want from me?" or "What am I in the Other’s desire?"

Graph of Desire and $d(A)$

Lacan's Graph of Desire, first introduced in Seminar VI and formalized in Écrits, maps the movement of the subject's divided speech and desire. $d(A)$ appears in the upper level of the graph, linking the subject’s unconscious truth and the locus of the Other's signifiers.

Within the graph, desire is the effect of a traversal between the points of enunciation and statement, marked by the movement between the symbolic register (of the Other) and the imaginary (the ego). The subject’s relation to the Other's desire constitutes the field in which their own desire is alienated and structured.

Name-of-the-Father and Symbolic Castration

The articulation of $d(A)$ is inseparable from the function of the Name-of-the-Father—the signifier that inscribes the law of prohibition and introduces symbolic Castration.

Symbolic castration ($\mathrm{\Phi }$) marks the point at which the maternal desire (the first and primordial Other) is no longer omnipotent. The father’s name installs a lack in the Other: the Other is not complete, not all ($\overline{A}$). It is only insofar as the Other is barred and lacking that desire can be constituted.

Thus, the subject's desire is a response to this lack in the Other. It is precisely this lack that generates the enigmatic status of the Other's desire—and leads to the emergence of the Objet a.

Objet a and the Cause of Desire

The Objet a is not the object of desire, but its structural cause. It is the remainder left behind by the subject’s entry into the symbolic, the trace of what was lost when desire became organized around the Other's desire.

In Lacan’s matheme, this is rendered as:

$d(A)\to a$

The desire of the Other gives rise to the objet a as the remainder, the lure, the unattainable cause that keeps desire in motion.

Clinical Implications and Technique

The concept of $d(A)$ is not simply theoretical—it plays a central role in the clinic of Psychoanalysis, guiding the understanding of Transference, interpretation, Symptom formation, and the direction of the Cure.

Transference and Interpretation

Transference can be understood as the subject’s supposition that the analyst knows what the Other desires. In the clinical encounter, the analyst is positioned as the enigmatic bearer of $d(A)$. Interpretation, then, must aim not at fulfilling this desire, but at traversing the fantasy organized around it.

The analyst’s tactic involves what Lacan calls “desire of the analyst” — a desire purified of demand, aiming to sustain the subject’s confrontation with their own desire as alienated in $d(A)$.

Symptom and Fantasy

Symptoms crystallize the subject’s failed attempts to satisfy or answer to the desire of the Other. They are formations that respond to the enigmatic position of $d(A)$. Fantasy, in Lacanian theory, is the framework through which the subject stages a response to the question: "What does the Other want from me?"

The clinical task is to destabilize this fantasy, allowing the subject to encounter the lack in the Other ($\overline{A}$) and to separate from the demand of the Other that structures their symptom.

Clinical Structures and $d(A)$

In Neurosis, the subject is caught in the question of the Other’s desire—marked by inhibition, obsessional rituals, or hysterical conversion.

In Psychosis, the foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father leads to the failure of symbolic castration. The Other is not barred; desire is not mediated. Instead of $d(A)$, the psychotic subject is confronted with a terrifying jouissance of the unbarred Other.

In Perversion, the subject assumes the role of the object of the Other’s desire—attempting to be the instrument of jouissance for the Other.

Influence and Legacy

The notion of the Desire of the Other has had profound ramifications across psychoanalytic theory, post-structuralist philosophy, and cultural theory.

Post-Lacanian Theory

Analysts such as Jacques-Alain Miller and Jean Laplanche have expanded on $d(A)$, with Miller emphasizing the function of the "desire of the analyst" and Laplanche offering a general theory of the Other’s enigmatic message as constitutive of subjectivity.

Feminist and Queer Theory

Feminist thinkers like Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler have critiqued the phallocentric assumptions behind Lacan’s account of desire, particularly the notion that desire is always mediated through a masculine symbolic order. Butler reinterprets $d(A)$ within her theory of performativity as the constitutive alienation of gendered subjectivity.

Cultural Critique

Cultural theorists such as Slavoj Žižek and Joan Copjec have deployed $d(A)$ in readings of ideology, cinema, and politics, arguing that modern subjectivity is structured around the enigmatic desire of the Other—now embodied in institutions, media, and power structures.

Criticism and Debate

While central to Lacanian theory, the concept of Desire of the Other has not been without controversy.

Theoretical Ambiguity

Some critics argue that $d(A)$ suffers from ambiguity: does it refer to the subject’s own desire for the Other’s desire, or the desire of the Other as such? The ambiguity between the genitive readings (“desire *of* the Other” vs. “desire *for* the Other”) complicates its clinical utility.

Evolution of the Concept

Within Lacan’s own work, there is debate about whether $d(A)$ evolves or remains constant. In the later seminars, especially after Seminar XX, desire gives way to a focus on jouissance, which operates beyond the symbolic and outside the mediation of the Other. This raises questions about the continued centrality of $d(A)$ in Lacan’s mature theory.

Critiques from Object Relations Theory

Analysts within the Anglo-American object relations tradition have challenged Lacan’s emphasis on language and the Other’s desire, favoring more affective and relational accounts of early subject formation.

See also

• Jacques Lacan
• Graph of Desire
• Objet a
• Other
• Symbolic Order
• Demand
• Need
• Castration
• Name-of-the-Father
• Transference
• Fantasy
• Symptom
• Psychoanalysis
• Desire
• Lack