From the author: Several years ago I wrote articles about psychoanalytic concepts. I think now is a good moment to remember. DESIRE “Already in Freud, the world is neither the world of things, nor the world of being, but the world of desire. It was desire that became the secret that was revealed to him in 1895 during the interpretation of dreams.” A dream, according to Freud, is nothing more than the fulfillment of a wish (with the exception of recurring dreams in cases of traumatic neurosis). It is “desire that motivates our mental apparatus to activity.” And although Lacan does not consider the concept of Desire (as well as the concept of the Other/Other) among the basic concepts of psychoanalysis, such as drive, the unconscious, repetition and transference, throughout his life he is interested in the desiring subject, not the thinking one. This is a literal reversal of the classical philosophical, Cartesian traditions. Freud often used the word Wunsch, which can be translated as already formed desire, and sometimes used the terms Lust and Begierde, which mean more like lust, desire. Lacanian desire is desire closer to the latter. But already articulated desire, or demand (request) - demande, in meaning is more similar to Freud's Wunsch. Lacan distinguishes not only desire (desire) and demand (demande), but also separates them from need. In the 1957/58 seminars he says: “The structure of desires is determined by something other than needs. Needs reach us refracted, broken, dismembered, and they are built by nothing other than... the laws of the signifier.” “Demand is that component of need that passes through the signifier addressed to the Other” (ibid., p. 99), “...desire, that is, need plus signifier.” Lacan puts the emphasis on speech, on signifiers, on the symbolic order. He builds a graph of desire, in which he shows the dynamics of the transformation of need into demand through a message addressed to the Other. A demand (or request) is always essentially a demand for love (recognition). Desire is the desire to be desired. Of course, desire is closely related to one of the basic concepts - attraction. Attractions are partial manifestations of desire. Lacan affirms the partial nature of any drive and distinguishes oral, anal, scopic and vocal. Desire, like attraction, cannot be satisfied. To each partial drive there corresponds a partial object. Desire has no object, but it has a cause. It is called the object-cause of desire. “The object of desire is always the object of desire of the Other, and desire itself is always the desire of the Other thing, or rather, that which is missing, ah, an object that was originally lost and which, as Freud shows us, we are eternally doomed to rediscover.” Desire is associated with lack. If something is desired, it means it is lacking, lacking. Desire is associated with prohibition. The prohibition revives desire, awakens it. It is known that nothing is more desirable than the forbidden. A law that prohibits only supports desire. Before the prohibition of incest or murder, there is no incestuous desire or desire to kill. Desire is found only as the desire of another. This is both the desire to be desired (the requirement of love) and the desire for what the other desires. Thus, the desire of the subject is alienated in the desire of the other. Lacan talks about this in connection with the dialectic of the relationship between slave and master. If the master (subject) desires what the slave (other) desires, he receives recognition, but also becomes dependent on it. Wanting what another wants, through a word, through a signifier, the subject alienates himself from his desire, identifying with the other. Lacan orders to follow his desire, not to betray his desire. The 1968/69 seminar “Le desir et son interpretation” is dedicated to desire and its interpretations. . S. Freud “The Interpretation of Dreams”, 1900. Lacan Seminar V “Formation of the Unconscious”, 1957-58 V. Mazin “Introduction to Lacan”, 2004 The text was published in the online magazine Lacanalia in 2010