We explain what desire is, the origin of the term, its various positive and negative meanings. Also, differences with need.
What is desire?
We all know in one way or another what desire is, what the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy defines as an “affective movement towards something that is desired.” That's because we've all had the experience of wanting to achieve or obtain something, longing for it or hoping that it will happen.
When we think of the word desire, the first thing that comes to mind is the children's story of the genie in the lamp, who upon being freed grants three wishes to his liberator, that is, he undertakes to magically satisfy three of his expectations, of your wants or desires. This means that desire, in principle, consists of the expectation of having something that one does not have, but one wants.
In fact, the history of the word itself traces its origins to the Latin word desidiumtranslatable as “leisure”, “laziness”, because it comes from the verb desidere“remain seated.”
However, the verb was added by analogy to these meanings I will desire: “to miss” or “to miss”, whose presence is recognizable in the words desire either desire (both translatable as desire or desire) in English and French respectively. So desire is linked to what we miss, what we want to have.
Today, however, we associate desire with many other senses. The word is used to refer, for example, to sexual attraction (sexual desire), to the vital drive of creativity (psychoanalytic desire), and even to the obstacles of worldly life that must be gotten rid of to experience enlightenment. , as proposed by Buddhism and Eastern philosophy.
However, In all cases, desire represents an impulse, a push, that leads us to act often comparable to hunger and thirst.
Desire can be a source of pleasure or suffering. It is compared to natural or primitive forces that reside within the human being, using metaphors such as the sea, fire, etc.
Desire and need
In the specific field of marketing, a distinction is usually made between desire and need when analyzing the consumption drives presented by the public of a given commercial sector.
In this sense, The need is what the consumer needs to satisfy, for biological, psychological or emotional reasons and that obeys primary, basic impulses of its survival. Hunger, for example, is a need to be satisfied.
Instead, Desires refer to the consumption of a specific object to satisfy a need through it. In the case of hunger satisfaction, the desire to do so by eating pizza constitutes a specific desire, therefore different from the desire to eat sushi, or the desire to eat Mexican food.
This classification operates at different levels and adapts to the characteristics of each consumer public, which can be immensely different from each other, according to cultural, ethnic, socioeconomic and etc. traits.
Continue with: Euphoria
References
- “I wish” on Wikipedia.
- “Desire” in the Dictionary of the language of the Royal Spanish Academy.
- “The desire” in Idoneos.
- “What is desire” by Eva Susperregui, Psychoanalyst.
- “Needs and desires” (video) in CIEP Virtual Campus.
