At the heart of the human structure lives a tension that can never be resolved: we desire what we lack, but when we obtain it, the desire there dissolves and moves. Jacques Lacanupon his return FreudThere he recognized the structural truth of the subject: desire does not point to a subject capable of satisfying it, but is supported precisely by the impossibility of satisfying it. Lacan formulates desire as expressed as “the desire of the other,” a structure that connects us to lack and, at the same time, constitutes us as speaking subjects. Lack, far from being a defect, is the essence that enables the movement of desire, and thus the movement of the self. It shapes him, it shapes us.
It can be said, on the one hand, that desire is a driving force and a promise; It motivates us to act, create, and connect. It is the force that launches us into the world and that shapes our uniqueness. Without desire there is no object. Lacan goes so far as to say that desire is a “metaphor for lack of being”: a chain that moves from one object to another, without ever reaching the point of completion. In this sense, desire is not a lack, but a movement; It is not a weakness, but a vital impulse.
But the opposite edge of desire—its inevitable opposite—is its insatiable character. in Still (Twentieth Symposium)Lacan warns that “there is no sexual relationship,” that is, there is no complete encounter between the subject and the object of his desire. There is always something left, a distance that cannot be appeased. Desire, being the Other, multiplies, moves and becomes more complex. In this intersubjective structure – mediated by the look, the word, or the silence of the other – desire becomes endless, endless, and unattainable.
Lacan emphasizes that desire is never satisfied, because its essence is displacement. Every time the object seems to respond to the desire, it moves, and is re-launched towards another point. Movement is perpetual, with no solution to continuity. Clinically, every satisfaction leaves a residual -thing A-, which escapes and re-starts the desire chain.
Desire that has been appropriated, as a free input, by consumption and politics.
This dynamic – which in psychoanalytic theory is structural, as we said – has found fertile ground in contemporary culture. Consumer industry It is based on the logic of wanting to maintain its perpetual renewal. Everything offered as an answer “latest mobile phone, perfect body, latest fashion, new rejuvenation surgery, unique experience, more profits, etc” comes with the promise of filling the gap. But once you have it, the glow fades and is replaced by another desire. Thus dissatisfaction becomes the real fuel of the market.
he Neoliberalism He knew how to read this structure, even better than those of us who have a passion for studying the science of human mind and behavior. What was once a self-drama – the impossibility of closing the gap – has turned into an endless, multi-million-dollar business model. This new discourse makes one believe that “there is no such impossibility,” hence its “success.”
Today, the promise is not called “desire,” but “happiness.” But it’s the same mechanism, only with nicer packaging, with better marketing, where the market turns lack (a state of desire) into a promise of complete satisfaction. Ads don’t sell products: they sell false bits of abundance, they sell the illusion that happiness is one purchase away. However, Lacanian logic reminds us that happiness, if understood as perfection, is impossible. There is nothing to guarantee it, because desire, by definition, cannot be satisfied without being extinguished.
That’s why the consumer industry needs to keep the cycle of desire alive. Each new promise should seem closer, brighter and more personalized. The implicit slogan is clear: Don’t stop wanting, don’t stop consuming. In this endless chain, the self and the consumer are confused, and the lack – which was previously a source of uniqueness – becomes a void that the market promises to fill again and again, until we are satisfied.
The result is a contemporary paradox: the search for happiness which, by not finding its object, turns into anxiety, compulsion, exhaustion and depression. We live in a time when desire is no longer mostly repressed, as in the classic Freudian model, but rather exaggerated in demand. We are being asked to want more, faster. But the double edge remains: the more we desire under this logic, the more dissatisfied and empty we become. We live in “discomfort overload”: as we said, fatigue, anxiety and depression are not seen as symptoms of repression, but as a result of the emptiness caused by saturation – the overproduction of desire and image -, which allows us to assume that this is the neurosis of the current age, ours.
Freud I had already anticipated this dilemma Discontent in cultureWhen he warned that human happiness can only be “accidental,” because the pleasure principle inevitably collides with reality. There is no permanent satisfaction. Each achievement reactivates a new deficiency. In the same vein, Freud pointed out that politics, along with psychoanalysis and education, belongs to the group of “impossible professions,” precisely because it attempts to respond to a demand that cannot be fully satisfied due to structure.
In today’s digital ecosystem, the displacement of desire has become the very logic of consumption. Social networks It functions as a universal device for the production and circulation of desire. There, he not only observes the self, but sees himself through the gaze of the other: likes, followers, where algorithms act as mediators of invisible but constant demand. Each post promises recognition that, once received, fades away and prompts the production of other content. Thus desire moves without interruption in continuity, from one form to another, from one desire to another, supported by a machine that translates Lacanian lack into an incentive for permanent consumption.
the Digital industry He understood something that Freud had already predicted in Discontent in Culture: that human beings are doomed to structural discontent. But while Freud saw this lack as an inevitable condition of social bonding, contemporary platforms have turned it into a business opportunity. The algorithm acts as an automated reading of the subconscious – the “anonymous knowledge” – of the subjects: it picks up our movements, our searches, our doubts, our tastes, our strengths and weaknesses, our personality traits and their performances, and turns them into data to offer new objects of desire. If Lacan asserted that desire “is not of the order of possession, but of being,” the system that exacerbates consumption as “an end in itself” has today managed to overturn this formula, making people believe that one is able to “be” through what one “possesses or shows,” according to what the digital other tells us “what we should have or what we should show.”
“Influencers,” viral trends, and the logic of endless scrolling are the everyday expression of this metaphor of desire. It’s not just about consuming products, it’s also about telling a story that promises perfection through vision. Happiness – presented as an object of consumption – becomes a promise of always deferred abundance, identical in structure to the political or romantic promise: both maintain the illusion that the next click, the next choice, or the next relationship will bring ultimate satisfaction. But this satisfaction never comes, because desire, true to its structure, escapes. What remains is an acceleration of the cycle: more desire, more consumption, more exposure, more emptiness.
As we said, the contemporary paradox is that we no longer repress desire, but rather overproduce it. There is no shortage but a surplus. The current command is not “giving up your desire,” but “desiring without ceasing.” This overstimulation – that drive to enjoy addictively, what Lacan calls “pleasure plus” – generates a different discomfort from that described by Freud: no longer a discomfort of repression, but of exhaustion. The current malaise is not that of the repressive Freudian superego – the one that forbids desire, but the cultural malaise of enjoyment – the ferocious superego that commands limitless consumption. Thus we live exhausted by desire, saturated with images, confusing the movement of desire with the promise of happiness that the digital market recycles every day.
In the political sphere, collective desire is organized in the same way as individual desire: it is always on the move, always believing that the next promise will bring the lost fullness. Every election cycle repeats this logic of desire: the candidate embodies, for a time, the supposed object of satisfaction. It promises to solve the problem of deficiency – insecurity, inequality, lack of development, lack of trust – as if there were a formula capable of filling the social vacuum. But, once power is achieved, the desire moves again, especially when it is not repeatedly fulfilled. However, the fulfilled promise also turns out to be partial, the ideal fades away, and dissatisfaction emerges again. The cycle begins again with new names and new promises repeating the same text. Or other, increasingly worse, if they are necessary to “fill” the new social deficiency: people also enjoy their leaders, their enemies, and their own complaints. Politics not only promises the satisfaction of desire, but also provides a means of enjoyment.
the Contemporary politicsTrapped in the logic of marketing, it has learned to function like the consumer industry: it creates desires and delivers instant solutions. But psychoanalysis teaches us that no leader or system is able to fill the structural deficiency in the social bond. Pretending otherwise leads not only to frustration, but also to disillusionment and collective emptiness.
Perhaps there, in realizing the limits of every comprehensive promise, lies the sign of democratic maturity. Accepting that politics cannot guarantee happiness, in the same way that consumption cannot satisfy us, is also a way to humanize public life. The impossibility that Freud warned of is not a failure, but rather a characteristic of humanity itself.
In the analytical trial, this double edge becomes a clinical tool. The transference – that link between patient and analyst – is transcended by desire, but not just any desire: the analyst’s desire. Lacan defines it as “goalless” desire, which is an ethical rather than an emotional stance. He states that the analyst’s desire “is not a pure desire, but a desire to obtain absolute difference,” that is, a desire that does not seek to fill the patient, but rather to open a space for him through which he can contemplate his lack. On that edge, between the lack of desire and its action, the possibility of a cure is at stake.
The double edge of desire is not a curse, but a structural fact. It makes us vulnerable, yes, but it also makes us move. To live in a wishful state – as we now know – is not to live dissatisfied, but to recognize that fullness is a necessary illusion, a compass that guides us, even if we never reach the edges, the extremes, to the final, immutable desired object – which does not exist. Desire, at its extreme, does no harm: it sustains us, gives us meaning to existence.