Need

In psychoanalysis, the concept of need (French: besoin) denotes biologically based necessities—such as hunger, thirst, or warmth—that are rooted in the body and seek satisfaction through an object. While Sigmund Freud associated need with basic bodily drives and instinctual tension, Jacques Lacan reconceptualized the term within a structural framework, distinguishing it from Demand and Desire. In Lacanian theory, need is articulated through Language, transformed into demand, and leaves a constitutive remainder—desire—that cannot be fulfilled. This tripartite distinction is central to Lacanian thought and differentiates psychoanalytic need from ordinary usage.

Terminology and Translation

The French term besoin is typically translated as "need" in English, but translation can obscure important distinctions. Lacan’s use of besoin maintains a reference to biological necessity while structurally opposing it to demand (demande) and desire (désir).

In Freud’s German texts, the distinction between Instinkt (instinct) and Trieb (drive) complicates translation. Although Freud rarely used the word "need" (Bedürfnis) as a technical term, his discussion of self-preservative instincts and the satisfaction of somatic tension prefigures the Lacanian category of need.

Lacan's structural emphasis makes "need" less a developmental stage and more a formal category: it refers to demands for specific satisfactions anchored in the body but mediated by the symbolic order.

Freud and the Psychoanalytic Background

In Freudian theory, need corresponds to the physiological conditions that generate psychic tension. Freud linked such tension to the pleasure principle, which governs the mental apparatus's tendency to discharge excitation and seek satisfaction.

Satisfaction of need was often tied to specific objects, such as the breast for the hungry infant, setting the stage for later discussions of object relations. Freud distinguished between needs essential for survival (e.g., hunger) and those related to sexual gratification, which fall under the rubric of Trieb rather than instinct.

Later psychoanalysts like D.W. Winnicott and Heinz Kohut emphasized the role of unmet or misrecognized needs in the development of the self and pathology, though these approaches shifted toward a developmental and relational focus. Lacan, by contrast, maintained a structuralist reading that subordinated "need" to language and subject formation.

Lacan’s Distinction: Need, Demand, Desire

Lacan introduces the triadic distinction between besoin (need), demande (demand), and désir (desire) most prominently in Seminar I and refines it in later seminars and texts.

• Need refers to biological necessity and can, in principle, be satisfied by a specific object (e.g., food).
• Demand is the articulation of need within the symbolic register. Because it is expressed through language, every demand also entails a demand for love, beyond the original object of need.
• Desire emerges as the excess or remainder when need is expressed through demand. As Lacan writes, "Desire begins to take shape in the margin in which demand becomes separated from need" (Écrits, "The Subversion of the Subject").

Importantly, Lacan denies that “pure need” exists in a meaningful sense for the speaking subject. Once the subject enters language, even the most basic expressions of need are mediated by symbolic structures. The infant's cry, for instance, is already interpreted and responded to within a social and linguistic frame, turning biological necessity into a communicative act.

This structural reading resists developmental reductionism. The child is not simply a biological organism evolving into a speaker; the subject is constituted through the other's response to its demand, and desire is inscribed as a gap or lack in this process.

Clinical and Technical Implications

In the clinical setting, the distinction between need, demand, and desire shapes how the analyst listens and responds. The analytic frame does not aim to gratify need or respond directly to demand. Instead, it creates a space in which the subject can encounter their own desire, which exceeds both.

For instance, the analysand's request for advice or reassurance may appear as a demand but should be understood structurally as expressing a desire for recognition or love. Responding directly may reinforce the illusion of a satisfiable need, obscuring the underlying desire.

This relates closely to the ethics of psychoanalysis, which resists positioning the analyst as the one who fulfills the patient’s needs. As Lacan puts it, "The only thing of which one can be guilty is of having given ground relative to one’s desire."

In transference, patients often direct demands toward the analyst that repeat childhood scenarios of unmet need. Recognizing these as structured repetitions rather than authentic needs allows the analyst to avoid being caught in the imaginary and instead to intervene at the level of the symbolic.

Conceptual Relations and Common Confusions

Because "need" appears to refer to something concrete and biological, it is often confused with several other psychoanalytic concepts. However, Lacanian theory insists on maintaining their distinctions.

• Need (besoin): A biological necessity (e.g., hunger), linked to specific satisfaction.
• Demand (demande): The articulation of need in language; includes a demand for love.
• Desire (désir): What remains unsatisfied in demand; irreducible to need or object.
• Drive (Trieb): A Freudian concept of partial instincts; not reducible to need and not aimed at a real object but at satisfaction through repetitive circuit.
• Instinct (Instinkt): Fixed, biological programs; distinct from the drive's flexibility.
• Request: A communicative act in language; lacks the structural and libidinal depth of demand.

Reception and Critical Discussion

Lacan’s structural approach to need has drawn both praise and criticism. Some scholars argue that he evacuates the concrete reality of human vulnerability and biological necessity by subordinating need to the symbolic order.

Others, such as Bruce Fink, defend Lacan’s position as a necessary corrective to theories that psychologize or biologize subjectivity.

There are also translation-based tensions. English readers may equate Lacan’s "besoin" with everyday meanings of need, missing its structural embedding in language. Likewise, reducing Lacan’s tripartite model to a developmental sequence (e.g., infant → language user → desiring subject) undermines its formal logic.

Some post-Lacanian approaches (e.g., feminist or trauma-informed psychoanalysis) have attempted to reintegrate a more nuanced account of embodied need without abandoning Lacan’s insights into desire and subjectivity.

See also

Biology Development

Demand Desire

Drive Instinct

Love Mother

Nature

Further reading

• Evans, D. (1996). An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge.
• Fink, B. (1995). The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Freud, S. (1915). Instincts and Their Vicissitudes. SE 14.
• Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the Pleasure Principle. SE 18.
• Freud, S. (1905). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. SE 7.
• Grosz, E. (1990). Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction. London: Routledge.
• Lacan, J. (1981). The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Trans. A. Sheridan. New York: Norton.
• Lacan, J. (1992). The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Trans. D. Porter. New York: Norton.
• Lacan, J. (2006). Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English. Trans. B. Fink. New York: Norton.
• Laplanche, J., & Pontalis, J.-B. (1973). The Language of Psycho-Analysis. Trans. D. Nicholson-Smith. London: Karnac.
• Miller, J.-A. (1991). "Suture: Elements of the Logic of the Signifier." In Screen, 18(4).
• Mitchell, J. (1974). Psychoanalysis and Feminism. London: Penguin.
• Winnicott, D.W. (1965). The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. London: Hogarth Press.