ABSTRACT
What is crucial in Lacan’s notion, and decisive for the conceptualisation of desire, is not so much the distinction between the registers as the question of difference. Because the distinction marks a difference between the registers of imaginary, symbolic, and real, the difference to which Lacan is referring is the difference that is “absolute in that it is common to all three”. There is a reason why it is impossible to catch the desire of the analyst. Lacan evokes it in his thesis about the incompatibility of desire and speech. The analyst bears the mark of the analytic experience, the point of no-return concerning his position as subject, an “it will never be the same again”, which has repercussions for the intransigence of a desire. That desire does not concern an object but the experience of mourning for the object orients it on condition that the analyst is not satisfied by this mourning.
