ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the notion of desire at the roots of the concept of maternity in psychoanalysis. It shows that maternity is an inherently human event and is therefore a notion displaced from what is natural. The concept of desire for a child is not univocal, although historically it was impossible to dissociate it from the “feminine destiny” par excellence. In diverse cultures, the child lent representation to women and cathected with representable value and positivity what, on the other side of the coin, was femininity without representation, situated outside the signifying universe. The chapter examines whether the conception of desire as a substitute is the only possible explanation of desire for a child and, expanding further, of a notion of desire in construction of subjectivity in general. It highlights the need to establish distinctions between the concept of lack, the notion of absence, and the notion of incompleteness.
