Short review Anxiety: part one

Unlike emotions such as anger or sadness, which we can identify and express (“I’m angry,” “I’m sad”), anxiety often manifests as a diffuse, tension, or overwhelming bodily sensation that seems to resists easy verbalization. It is felt deeply but not always fully grasped by conscious thought or language.

Lacan also highlights that the lack experienced in anxiety is not the subject’s own lack, but the lack of another, usually the Other who is significant in their symbolic universe, such as a parent or primary caregiver. When someone becomes trapped in the desires and lacks of the Other, they lose the space to develop their own needs and subjectivity. This creates a paradoxical situation where the subject feels engulfed by an external demand or presence, instead of an internal absence that could give rise to personal desire. The individual’s own desire becomes impossible to locate because it is drowned out by the Other’s desire.

A key concept here is the “barrier” maintained by the paternal function between the child and the mother. This barrier introduces a limit or prohibition that protects the child from being overwhelmed by the mother’s desires.  

For example, when the child runs to the mother for attention, the fatherfigure could say, ‘Let’s give mom some rest now, she’s tired and needs quiet.’ In this example, it isn’t said harshly, but gently, with care for the mother. The child sees that the father’s words come from love and respect for the mother, not rejection.

Because the father includes the mother in the law (a law above her own law) in a loving way, the child can accept this boundary without feeling abandoned. The limitation feels safe, not cold. This is how the paternal function protects the child from being overwhelmed by the mother’s constant presence, while also showing that love and limits can go together

When this barrier is missing or crossed, the child is directly confronted with the mother’s lack and desire. This leads to a vicious cycle: the child becomes obsessed with satisfying the Other’s desire, neglecting their own. The flood of external demands feeds the anxiety itself, which grows as the child’s autonomy shrinks. It’s a dynamic that often repeats itself in adulthood.

The neurotic demand for answers

Lacan points to the neurotic’s specific demand of the Big Other: they want the Big Other to tell them exactly what they want. The neurotic subject tries to escape anxiety by forcing the Other to make a demand explicit. They hope that by putting the Other on the spot, by saying, “Tell me what you want from me”, they can resolve the mystery that feeds their anxiety.

Beyond demands and negotiations, the subject ultimately confronts the limit imposed by the symbolic order: the impossibility of fully satisfying the Other or completely closing the gap. This structural impossibility, castration , is precisely what anxiety signals.

Take the obsessional, for example. He tends to “kill” the desire of the Other by trying to completely satisfy it, desperately attempting to fill a lack he unconsciously knows cannot be filled.

Imagine a man and a woman. The man buys her flowers, jewelry, expensive clothes, yet she remains unsatisfied. One day, he brings home roses. She replies, “You know I like dandelions more, why didn’t you get those?” The next day, he brings dandelions, but she simply places them in a vase without saying thank you.

Now the man wonders: “What more does she want? I gave her everything. She asked for dandelions instead of roses and I brought them. Why isn’t she happy?”

But the issue isn’t about the flowers. It’s about something beyond the object. He’s trying to fulfill her desire by neutralizing it. But in doing so, he erases its very structure, its openness, its lack.

The woman’s desire isn’t something that can be filled by a list of items. She may ask for flowers, clothes, or jewelry, but her desire is not reducible to any of these things. What she wants, in truth, is something that cannot simply be given. She wants to be desired in a way that anticipates her, without her needing to speak it.

Another example, imagine someone who always tries to please their partner by asking, ‘What do you want me to do?’ The partner gives answers at first, but eventually runs out of requests. Then the person realizes they can’t ever do enough to completely satisfy them. This moment is scary, it’s when they see there’s always going to be a gap they can’t fill. That’s the limit, and that’s what causes their anxiety

In this way, anxiety is not something that can be simply avoided or escaped by fulfilling demands or knowing what the Other wants. Rather, anxiety is always lurking because it points to the irreducible lack at the heart of subjectivity and desire. The neurotic’s attempt to master anxiety by making the Other speak, ends up confronting them with the very castration they hoped to avoid. The fact that they never succeed in finding out.

Understanding this offers a profound perspective for psychoanalytic work. Helping a client live with the tension of desire and lack, without collapsing into anxiety, is to help them accept the limit, the castration, and reclaim their own desire beyond the demands of the Other. Anxiety then becomes not a paralyzing force but a signal of the fundamental conditions of being a subject in the symbolic order.

The neurotic takes the path where they believe the Other is whole and complete, that the Other knows exactly what they want. The neurotic says, “Please tell me what you want, so I can stop worrying.” This is an attempt to reduce anxiety by making the Other’s desire clear and understandable.

The neurotic’s way is understandable because facing the Other’s lack is scary. By demanding clear answers from the Other, the neurotic tries to avoid this fear. But this demand eventually shows the truth: no one can fully satisfy desire or be complete: castration.

Object a: The fear of becoming the object

You cannot desire what you already have. Desire always arises from a sense of lack, from something you perceive as missing. This fundamental experience of absence is what fuels desire, and it’s also the basic mechanism behind advertising. Think about it: you didn’t really know you needed a phone with a better camera until you saw that photo of a cat taken by someone with an iPhone 13. Suddenly, you become aware of something you lacked, and that creates desire.

In Lacanian psychoanalysis, this experience of lack is symbolized by the small “a,” which originates from what Lacan calls the “objet petit a” or “object little a.” This small “a” represents the object-cause of desire, the thing that is missing and drives the subject’s desire forward. It’s not a tangible object but rather the symbolic marker of something absent, an unfulfilled desire.

Now, when it comes to anxiety, the dynamic changes in an important way. Anxiety is closely linked to the figure Lacan calls the “big Other,” often written as “A.” Remember, the big Other represents the symbolic order, the language and social rules that govern us, and most importantly, the desire of the Other, what others want from us, or what society demands. Imagine that the big Other itself is not complete; it also has a lack or something missing. This lack is located exactly where the objet petit a is placed, the place of desire.

Here’s the key point: the subject’s desire is actually the object of the big Other’s desire. In other words, the subject wants what the Other wants them to want. The subject’s lack (their desire) is the answer to the Other’s question: “What do you want?” But what the Other really wants is for you to show them your lack, to signal what you are missing. This is Lacan’s way of explaining how desire and lack are structured within language and relationships.

The neurotic’s anxiety can be understood as a fear of becoming an object, that is, being reduced to something that only exists for the desires of the Other. When Lacan says the subject is “called to the missing place,” it can be read as the subject’s fear of being objectified, losing their status as a subject with agency and becoming merely an object that fulfills someone else’s desire. This is a nightmare for the neurotic.

To clarify, think of agency as the capacity to act, decide, and be a self, the subject has agency, but an object does not. This distinction is important. The neurotic fears not just their dependence on a symbolic system they didn’t create , they have accepted castration, the idea that we are all limited and incomplete, but now even their sense of identity, their consistent selfhood, feels threatened. The symbolic order (the big Other) demands more: it says, “It’s not enough that you have accepted castration. Prove it to me. Show me you really accepted it.”

Nothing is more terrifying for the neurotic than this. The one thing they have accepted, castration, or symbolic limitation, is now being questioned. They are being reduced to an object for the desires of someone else.

What does “accepting castration” really mean here? Lacan explains that this acceptance is not just a personal feeling but a linguistic mechanism. We regulate ourselves through signifiers, words, symbols, images, according to the symbolic order of society. This symbolic order imposes limits on us, shaping how we live and desire.

To see what happens when neurotic anxiety arises: imagine the neurotic subject’s desire follows the big Other’s desire as its foundation. The neurotic lives their life oriented toward what they think they lack, which always seems to be what they believe others desire from them.

But one day their partner says: “I don’t even know who you are anymore. I need space.”

In that moment, the fantasy collapses. The partner’s words reveal their own lack and uncertainty, something that cannot be controlled or soothed by devotion. The person realizes: “I can’t be exactly what they want, because even they don’t know what they want.”

Here, anxiety emerges, not only from failing to satisfy the Other, but from confronting the truth that the Other also lacks, also desires without guarantee. It’s similar to the example of the man with the flowers, but here the promise that “If I just try hard enough, they’ll be fulfilled” is exposed as impossible.

 When the neurotic’s fantasy is undermined, they face two choices: they can confront their anxiety and the truth of the Other’s lack, or they can retreat. Often, they choose the latter, returning to their fantasy and trying to regain a version of the Other that is whole and complete, not lacking. They try to manipulate the Other, hoping to satisfy their own desire by controlling the Other’s desire.

This dynamic is the core of the neurotic’s anxiety. Instead of facing the frightening reality of lack, they demand from the Other: “Ask me. Tell me what you want from me.” They try to force clarity onto the Other’s desire to reduce their own anxiety, hoping that by doing so they can finally satisfy their desire.

This struggle was described by Lacan in the early 1950s and remains central to understanding neurotic desire and anxiety. The neurotic’s demand is an attempt to master the Other’s desire, but because the Other is fundamentally incomplete and its desire is never fully knowable, the anxiety persists.

In essence, anxiety emerges from the tension between our own desire, the lack we feel inside, and the impossible task of meeting the Other’s desire perfectly. The neurotic fears losing their subjectivity, being reduced to an object in the symbolic system, and losing agency. Anxiety reminds us that desire is never fully resolved, it’s always entangled with lack, language, and the demands of others.

Castration as the Confrontation with Fundamental Lack

Lacan describes how the neurotic subject finds themselves trapped in a regressive cycle of questioning. When all forms of questioning are ultimately exhausted, down to the absolute zero point, the castration relation finally emerges. This means that when the Other can no longer pose any further questions, the only remaining demand is the sign of castration directed at the subject. In other words, the neurotic is brought exactly to the place they have been trying to avoid: the confrontation with a fundamental lack.

This lack is something the neurotic subject has tried to escape through a fantasy, but it inevitably returns when the Other forces the subject to acknowledge their castration. This moment is laden with anxiety, because the neurotic has to face their own incompleteness and limitation. They realize they are not whole or self-sufficient; there is a gap or void that cannot be filled.

The anxiety that arises in those moments, “What if they see who I really am?”, is not just embarrassment; it is a confrontation with the fundamental lack at the heart of subjectivity.

This is the moment where castration operates, not as literal loss, but as the structural impossibility of being complete in the eyes of the Other. The self is exposed as inconsistent, and the desire to be fully known or fully loved is revealed as impossible.

The unpredictability of the big Other

For Lacan, the Big Other is essentially the symbolic order. The Other represents the law, the norm, the system of rules that governs social life. Imagine traffic rules: you must turn right, signal when switching lanes, stay in the proper lane. But the symbolic goes beyond explicit laws; it also includes the unspoken social rules and norms that structure our everyday existence.

A clear example is gender normativity. The symbolic order categorizes and divides people according to certain structures, providing both limitations and a sense of identity and coherence. Even those who rebel against a norm must first recognize it in order to resist it. This is why people who spend their whole lives trying not to resemble their parents often end up acting like them anyway, their parents remain the unconscious reference point precisely because so much mental energy is devoted to them.

This brings us to anxiety. Anxiety arises when the Big Other, which normally functions as the upholder of law and stability, suddenly becomes a figure of desire itself. Instead of being an impartial judge or a stable point of reference, the Other turns unpredictable, unstable, and desiring.

Imagine a parent who usually sets clear boundaries but suddenly behaves erratically, punishing whimsically and unpredictably. This does not produce security but uncertainty and fear. Psychoanalysis describes this as a shift from a containing parent, who offers safety and structure, to an impinging parent, who invades the child’s psychic space and undermines their sense of security.

According to Lacan, such an upbringing can contribute to the development of perverse structures. When a child learns that the law only holds as long as an authority figure is present to enforce it, they adopt the logic: “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” Perversion arises when the law is not experienced as a stable structure but as something contingent on the whims and emotions of the lawgiver. This explains why in certain perverse dynamics, law and punishment merge into a violent game of power and desire.

When Lacan says anxiety is experienced, it means someone in your life is occupying too much psychic space. They give you no breathing room; you feel suffocated. This feeling of suffocation, the need to reclaim space, often emerges during interactions where you unconsciously distance yourself to regain some freedom. The other person denies you that space, and the result is anxiety.

.When anxiety strikes, the desire of the Big Other becomes overwhelming and all-encompassing. It exceeds your own desire and takes over the cause of your desire. This is where anxiety comes from: the object of your desire becomes the object of the desiring Other, causing fear. The desire of the Big Other becomes your desire. What they want is your lack. They want you.

Imagine a student who’s always been self-motivated and loves learning for its own sake. But as graduation approaches, they realize their parents, teachers, and peers are all intensely invested in what they’ll choose next. They keep asking: “What will you do? What are your plans? You’re so talented, don’t waste it!”

Suddenly, the student feels paralyzed. Their own desire is drowned out by the weight of everyone else’s expectations. It’s no longer “What do I want?” but “What do they want from me?” Their anxiety comes from being positioned as the object of the Other’s desire, their success, their pride, their fantasy.

The student feels their own lack exposed: they don’t have a clear answer, and they fear disappointing everyone. Their anxiety is the sign that the Other’s desire has hijacked their own, making them the object that is supposed to fulfill them.

Anxiety as the Experience of a Lack of Lack

Why do I desire this? Why is this what I want? In the case of anxiety, the “why” that drives my desire becomes the “what” for someone else, my lack, my gap, or what orients me in life, becomes the target of the Other. What do they want? They want that lack, that cause. They want me, by extension.

Imagine a young adult deciding on a career. They may ask themselves: “What do I really want to do? What kind of person do I want to be?” This question is open, it’s their lack, their space to explore. But their parents see this uncertainty and react:

“You should become a lawyer. You’d make us so proud. Don’t waste your talent.”

Now the gap in the young adult’s desire is no longer theirs alone. It has become something the parents want to fill.

They feel anxious because their private question (why do I want this?) is no longer safe, the parents want to define it for them (be a lawyer). The parents want that gap, that possibility, for their own desire (their pride, their fantasy of success). So anxiety emerges because their own desire is hijacked by the Other’s desire.

Lacan does not only explain this theoretically; he also offers a visual metaphor: the Möbius strip. Picture an ant walking on this surface. At any moment, it can believe there is another side it has not yet explored. That “other side” is the objet petit a, the hidden backside of the path it walks. Yet if it walks long enough, it will realize both sides are in fact one continuous surface.

This paradox is that what appears to be hidden, what lies behind the mirror in which I see myself, is exactly what drives me. I know something is behind that mirror, though I cannot directly perceive it. In Lacanian algebra, this lack, the blind spot in my experience, is represented by object a.

Imagine the screen you are now looking at. Behind that screen is something you cannot see but know is there. In Lacanian terms, that which you intuitively sense but cannot grasp. It is the blind spot in your perception, the background to your own gaze.

What does this mean for anxiety? According to Lacan, anxiety is the experience of a lack of lack. When that lack, the missing void that normally organizes your desire, is removed, something is revealed for which there is no symbolic solution. This is the enigmatic object of anxiety: the Real.

In other words, anxiety emerges not when you lack something, but when the very structure of lack itself is called into question or disappears, leaving you exposed to an unrepresentable, raw encounter with the Real. This encounter is profoundly unsettling because it cannot be symbolized or integrated into the symbolic order that normally structures your reality.

To put it simply: we live our lives driven by lack, by something missing that fuels desire and motivates us. But when that fundamental missing piece, the lack itself, vanishes or becomes inaccessible, what remains is pure anxiety, the terror of nothingness or the void without structure or meaning.

Thus, castration is not just a limit or a negative experience; it is a fundamental structuring element of subjectivity. It marks the place of the impossible fullness, the point at which desire is born and simultaneously frustrated. Our lives are lived in the tension between wanting to fully enjoy by our on terms and being unable to do so, between recognizing our lack and fearing the absence of that very lack.

Imagine swimming in the vast ocean. Beneath your feet, there is a point where your vision fades into darkness. You cannot see anything, yet you know something is there. This isn’t simply losing sight of an object, it’s the loss of the very possibility of loss itself. The ocean can be calming for some, a horizon of simplicity, air, and water, but for others, it is a suffocating encounter with the Real: the absence of any solid ground to hold onto.

In psychoanalysis, the “object a” is the elusive cause of desire, something that forever escapes fulfillment and yet remains at the core of our yearning.

Why then does the Other’s desire provoke anxiety in us? First, because we realize that we ourselves become an object within the desire of the Other. We are not fully autonomous agents but are instead caught up as objects in their longing. Second, we become aware that our own desire is not entirely “ours,” which breeds a profound feeling of estrangement or alienation. Third, the object a reveals a fundamental lack inside ourselves, making us fearful that we will never be truly complete or satisfied.

This anxiety is existential, it touches the very heart of what it means to be human and to desire in relation to others. Lacan insists that the Real is precisely what anxiety signals. The object a belongs to the irreducible Real of the subject; it is something left over, a residue of the process through which the subject becomes a speaking being. When a child enters language and society, they become a split subject, inevitably leaving something behind, this leftover is object a. Imagine a child who is babbling or crying without words. Adults rush to interpret: “Are you hungry? Tired? Hurt?”

By learning to say: “I’m hungry”, the child enters language. Their needs and feelings get translated into words that others understand. But not everything they felt can be put into words. Some of that raw intensity is left over, unspoken. This leftover is object a.

Later in life, anxiety can strike when that leftover reappears.

For example, an adult in a meeting feels their throat tighten, heart race. They can’t find words for why they feel this way. There’s no clear reason, no threat, no explanation.

This nameless surge is the leftover that wasn’t absorbed into meaning. It signals the Real.

Anxiety is precisely the moment when the subject confronts that, the part of them that language can’t cover over or explain away.

The Other doesn’t know either

Often, we react to other people’s desires in one of two ways. If we step out of the comforting fantasy and perceive the Other’s lack, the neurotic path is to face anxiety. When the fantasy begins to waver, and we glimpse the Other as truly desiring, panic sets in. After all, our fantasies serve to mask our own ignorance about what we want. We build illusions about what the Other desires, but what we actually confront is a signifier of the Other’s own lack, meaning, they do not know what they want either.

This revelation, “Oh my God, you are just like me”, is the root of anxiety in the neurotic subject. They fear this mutual ignorance because it threatens the foundation of their identity. Meanwhile, the pervert delights in this incompleteness, embracing the role of the object that can fill the void, the symbolic phallus that promises to complete what is missing.

At the same time, we often try to avoid this anxiety by demanding the Other clearly state their desire. Yet, the Other can only answer by showing us our own castration, our own lack “Show me your wound, prove you are cut.” This idea of castration recurs throughout Lacan’s work, symbolized by the loss of the foreskin, a small piece of the body that is cut away and left behind, becoming the prototype for the object a, the first lost object.

The danger of truly seeing the Other as desiring is that it threatens the very cause of our own existence, the cause of our desire. Depression, for example, can be understood as waking up one day with no desire at all, no motivation, no hope, no reason to act. This is the worst human experience, the absence of desire, often felt as if someone has stolen our very lack, the space we need to be ourselves.

In healthy adult relationships, we can express the need for space, saying “I need some fresh air” or “I need a break”, thus managing anxiety by maintaining a buffer zone between ourselves and others. Anxiety arises when this space is taken from us, when we cannot hang up the phone or end a conversation because the Other smothers us, just like a caregiver who never lets a child breathe.

This lack of space is what makes it so dangerous to fully acknowledge the Other’s desire. It threatens to erase the cause of our own desire and autonomy. Anxiety becomes a familiar, though unpleasant, companion because it signals the absence of that safe distance.

People can adapt to almost anything, even trauma and extreme loss. For example, in a group of men in an aggression control program, many who had spent years in prison said they preferred jail to freedom. Why? Because in prison, they knew their place, had structure, and could survive. Outside, their lives were chaotic and uncertain, making them long to return to what was familiar, even if harmful. This shows how humans seek stability and fear the unknown.

When we cannot bear the anxiety caused by desire and lack, we often project our unbearable feelings onto the world. The hand, an example often overlooked compared to the opposable thumb, symbolizes human adaptability. Our ability to physically manipulate the environment has allowed us to survive anywhere, but emotionally, we can also project our internal conflicts outward, sometimes becoming aggressors or withdrawing completely.

In therapy and personal growth, the goal often involves learning to tolerate the uncomfortable emptiness,  to create a space where lack can be felt without immediate avoidance or filling it with distractions. This means accepting uncertainty and discomfort as natural parts of growth and identity formation. When anxiety becomes overwhelming, it signals that this balance is disturbed and that the flow of desire needs to be restored.

Desire and anxiety, then, are inseparable partners in the human experience. Desire arises from lack, an emptiness that drives us to seek and create meaning. Anxiety emerges when this emptiness is too stark or threatening. The elusive objet petit a, the tiny object cause of desire, is both a source of vitality and vulnerability. How we relate to others, how much space is allowed for our own desire to flourish, shapes how we live with this paradox.

Understanding this complex dance between desire, anxiety, and lack offers profound insights into human emotions, identity, and relationships. It reminds us that being human means living with a tension, a longing that can never be fully satisfied, an emptiness that can never be completely filled, and an anxiety that reveals the fragile nature of our existence. Accepting and embracing this paradox opens the door to deeper self-understanding, richer relationships, and a more authentic way of living.