demand

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(dĭ-mănd') pronunciation

v., -mand·ed, -mand·ing, -mands.

v.tr.
  1. To ask for urgently or peremptorily: demand an investigation into the murder; demanding that he leave immediately; demanded to speak to the manager.
  2. To claim as just or due: demand repayment of a loan.
  3. To ask to be informed of: I demand a reason for this interruption.
  4. To require as useful, just, proper, or necessary; call for: a gem that demands a fine setting.
  5. Law.
    1. To summon to court.
    2. To claim formally; lay legal claim to.
v.intr.
To make a demand.

n.
  1. The act of demanding.
  2. Something demanded: granted the employees' demands.
  3. An urgent requirement or need: the heavy demands of her job; the emotional demands of his marriage; an increased oxygen demand.
  4. The state of being sought after: in great demand as a speaker.
  5. Economics.
    1. The desire to possess a commodity or make use of a service, combined with the ability to purchase it.
    2. The amount of a commodity or service that people are ready to buy for a given price: Supply should rise to meet demand.
  6. Computer Science. A coding technique in which a command to read or write is initiated as the need for a new block of data occurs, thus eliminating the need to store data.
  7. Law. A formal claim.
  8. Archaic. An emphatic question or inquiry.
idiom:

on demand

  1. When presented for payment: a note payable on demand.
  2. When needed or asked for: fed the baby on demand.

[Middle English demanden, from Old French demander, to charge with doing, and from Medieval Latin dēmandāre, to demand, both from Latin, to entrust : dē-, de- + mandāre, to entrust.]

demandable de·mand'a·ble adj.
demander de·mand'er n.

SYNONYMS   demand, claim, exact, require. These verbs mean to ask for urgently or insistently: demanding better working conditions; claiming repayment of a debt; exacted obedience from the child; tax payments required by law.



You demand something from or (less commonly) of someone (demanded an apology from or of him), and you make a demand on someone for something (kept putting more demands on the overworked staff for their time).

Previous:delusion, illusion, deliver, deliberative
Next:demi-, demo, demur

Desire for a product or service that results in a purchase. Demand levels vary along a continuum from negative demand that leads to avoidance to excess demand that outpaces supply. Different marketing techniques are appropriate at different points along the continuum. For example, consumers are persuaded to donate blood by conversional marketing that changes their perception of it from a frightening to a positive experience. Some products for which there is no demand, such as tie-dye clothing in the 1980s, came into demand again in the 1990s through stimulational marketing. Developmental marketing creates a product to fill a previously unsatisfied demand or need. Other types of marketing increases demand for declining brands or may serve to maintain demand for a successful brand. At the far end of the demand continuum, demarketing and countermarketing are used to suppress demand. See also cross elasticity of demand; demand-oriented pricing.

Economic expression of desire, and ability to pay, for goods and services. Demand is neither need nor desire; the essence of demand is the willingness to exchange value (goods, labor, money) for varying amounts of goods or services, depending upon the price asked.

Previous:Delphi Technique, Delivery Date, Delivery
Next:Demand Curve, Demand Deposit, Demand Loan
Quantity of goods or services purchased at a given price.
See supply and demand.


Example: Although 1,000 new housing units were produced last year, there was demand for only 400 units, causing overbuilding in the local housing market.

Previous:Delivery, Delinquent
Next:Demand Loan, Demised Premises
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verb

  1. To ask for urgently or insistently: call for, claim, exact, insist on (or upon), require, requisition. Idioms: cry out for. See request.
  2. To assert one's right to: claim. Idioms: lay claim to. See give/take/reciprocity, owned/unowned, request.
  3. To have as a need or prerequisite: ask, call for, entail, involve, necessitate, require, take. See necessary/unnecessary, over/under.

noun

  1. The act of demanding: call, claim, cry, exaction, requisition. See request.
  2. Something asked for or needed: exigence, exigency (often used in plural), need, want. See necessary/unnecessary, over/under.


n

Definition: question, request
Antonyms: grant, offer, reply

v

Definition: ask strongly for something
Antonyms: cede, give, grant, offer, reply

v

Definition: require
Antonyms: eliminate, give, present, supply

In economics, the volume of goods which purchasers are able and willing to buy. This depends on their income and preferences, the price of other products, and the price of the product concerned. When preferences alone are isolated, demand can be seen on a demand curve, a graph with prices on the y-axis and demand on the x. Typical demand curves slope downwards from left to right, showing demand falling as prices rise.

The specific slope of the demand curve as it relates to any commodity depends on the elasticity of demand, that is, the sensitivity of the consumer to changes in price. Together with supply, demand determines prices in competitive markets.


1. The electric load on a system, integrated over a specific time interval; usually expressed in watts or kilowatts.
2. The volume of gas per unit time (usually expressed in cubic feet per hour or liters per second) or the amount of heat (usually expressed in Btu per hour or megajoules per hour) required for the operation of one or more gas appliances.
3. The rate of flow of water, usually expressed in gallons per minute (liters per second), furnished by a water supply system to various types of plumbing fixtures and water outlets under normal conditions.


The concept of demand is not Freudian. It was developed by Jacques Lacan, who linked it with need and desire (Lacan, 1966, 1991). Demand is identifiable by the five clinical traits that constitute it, by the status that it gives the object, by its function in relation to the Other, and finally by its topological register.

Regarding demand, we can say that 1) it arises only from speech; 2) it is addressed to someone; 3) it is nevertheless only implicit; 4) it is related to a need for love, but also to desire; 5) it does not need to be sustained by any real object.

The object of demand is what is lacking in the unconscious Other, and thus it is only a fantasmic object. Its function is to satisfy the drive and to make the demand of the subject and the demand of the Other coincide. Although it is tied to both the symbolic and the real, the register of demand is primarily imaginary, and thus most closely related to the body.

Before outlining more recent perspectives on demand, we must return to what Lacan said about it in relation to oral, anal, and genital regions of the body that serve as the sources of demand.

The oral demand calls for an inverse response, such that the other's answer to the imperative "feed me" is "let yourself be fed." This inversion becomes a source of discord or even of destructive urges. To whom is the demand addressed? To the Other, and not the mother. It is addressed to the Other that separates the demand from a desire. And that desire, in turn, deprives the demand of its satisfaction. Thus the demand becomes a non-demand. The dream of the "beautiful butcher's wife," as reported by Freud, is a perfect example of this. What is the object of her desire to define? It is a cannibalistic object. This desire is directed towards the nourishing body, an organic unconscious object through which the demand's relation to the Other can be sexualized. This libidinization, "which is nothing but surplus," deprives the need of its gratification. The function of desire, which sustains all demand, is in turn maintained in it and thus preserved. Desire can be recognized in the field of speech by the negation with which it originates: this, and not that!

The original oral relation between the mother and her child is constantly fed by a kind of hostility in which each one is convinced, at the imaginary level, of being "bawled out" by the other. Donald Winnicott (1974) emphasizes moreover that the object is so good, so exciting—that it bites. Consultations with mothers and children always show this.

At the anal stage, need reigns supreme; but while demand sets out to restrain need, desire wants to expel it. The one is entrusted with satisfying it, while the other is determined to control it. In the end, this control is legitimated only by turning need into a gift expected by an other, who is always primordially the mother. The oblation of this exonerating gift is metonymic. In order to evacuate the gift of symbolic desire, the one who gives it (child, student, or citizen, for example) could well adopt the slogan "everything for the other" in reference to the one who expects it (the mother, the teacher, or an authority figure)—this is true enough in the voting booth, at any rate. Such a gift is not produced by the one who gives it: someone else is the producer, someone who is able to wait for it only as long as the giver is suffering. It is not that the gift is necessarily painful in itself; the reaction of the one who receives it is the determining factor in that respect. So that her expectations will not be in vain, the mother eroticizes her relation with the child. She makes the child a sexual partner, involved in a fantasy in which he becomes the imaginary phallic object. In the end, the child will have been forced to do the only thing it was able to do. This was how the sadomasochistic economy was described by Freud, who took the symbolic equivalence of penis, feces, and child as his starting point.

How do we recognize an obsessional neurosis? By a declared conflict between demand and desire, satisfaction and discipline, need and legitimacy, gift and exoneration. The outcome of this conflict can only be a resignation to suffering. The characteristic "it could have been worse" attitude alludes to the masochistic jouissance that the obsessional derives from it, while "You had that coming" sums up the sadistic expectation of the other, who is without doubt the father—when it comes to need, he's always too much.

At the genital stage, demand seeks out a real partner. A repressed demand returns in the field of sexuality, and it will be satisfied only by a real engagement—one the subject wants to wait for, since he or she intends to bring it about. Thus the demand is based on the primacy of a sexual desire that is certainly sustained by a need, but that emphasizes a real lack in the other. Far from realizing desire, this lack constantly renews it. "The subject does not know what he desires most," either from the other or in terms of his own lack. From then on, the "something else" that originates from this lack of knowledge is related to a desire that is deceived. It is deceived if it believes itself to be lacking only the other, the missing half that is but a shadow from the past.

Taking the concept of transitivism as their point of departure, Gabriel Balbo and Jean Bergès (1996) have reconceptualized the analysis of demand. For them, demand cannot be conceived independently of the infant's identification with the discourse that the mother expresses in response the baby's cries, smiles, gurgling, and gestures. There is a double division at work here. The mother's own discourse, which she puts in the mouth of her child, divides the mother into a bodily, experienced real demand in contrast to what she expresses. The child is also divided from its own real demand by identifying with whatever part of that demand the mother expresses. This double division, with its consequent double repression, has an organizing influence on the ego, the status of the object, body image, the infant's jubilation at its own specular image, and the I. All processes of identification must be rethought in these terms, while at the same time demand and identification are also the origin of no less a dualism than that of life and death.

Such an analysis allows one to rethink the demand for an analysis, the preliminary interviews, the analytic contract, the direction and conduct of the treatment, and ultimately the transference. This reconceptualization reaches the very core of the discursive framework, and the analysis of dreams as well as the patient's speech is determined by it.

Bibliography

Balbo, Gabriel and Bergès, Jean. (1996). L'Enfant et la psychanalyse. Paris: Masson.

Lacan, Jacques. (1966 [2002]).Écrits. Paris: Seuil.Écrits: A selection. (Bruce Fink, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton.

——.(1991). Le Séminaire-livre VIII, le transfert (1960-61). Paris: Seuil.

Winnicott, Donald W. (1974). The fear of breakdown. International Review of Psychoanalysis, 1. Reprinted in Psychoanalytic explorations. (1989). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

—GABRIEL BALBO

This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

Peremptory allegation or assertion of a legal right.

A demand is an emphatic claim, which presumes that no doubt exists regarding its legal force and effect. It is a request made with authority.

A money demand is a demand for a fixed sum of money that arises out of an agreement or contract. Commercial paper is frequently payable on demand or immediately upon request.

A legal demand is one that is made by a lawfully authorized individual and is proper as to form, time, and place.

The amount of any given commodity that people are ready and able to buy at a given time for a given price. (See supply and demand.)

An economic principle that describes a consumer’s desire and willingness to pay a price for a specific good or service. Holding all other factors constant, the price of a good or service increases as its demand increases and vice versa. 

Investopedia Says:
Think of demand as your willingness to go out and buy a certain product. For example, market demand is the total of what everybody in the market wants.

Businesses often spend a considerable amount of money in order to determine the amount of demand that the public has for its products and services. Incorrect estimations will either result in money left on the table if it’s underestimated or losses if it’s overestimated.

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pronunciation

IN BRIEF: An urgent need or requirement; claim. Also: to ask forcefully; command.

pronunciation Do your job and demand your compensation — but in that order. — Cary Grant (1904-1986).

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The predicted amount of a product or service which will be sold at a stated price.

  • d. elasticity — the responsiveness with which the demand for a product or service, for example for veterinary services, varies with its price. If there is great flexibility there is elasticity. When the demand is the same irrespective of the price there is inelasticity.

n

In economics, refers to the buying of services or goods; in dental care, generally denotes the active request for and purchase of dental care services.

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categories related to 'demand'

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For a list of words related to demand, see:

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Wikipedia on Answers.com:

Demand (psychoanalysis)

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'In Lacan, demand appears to be a generic term designating the symbolic, significant site in which the primordial desire is gradually alienated'.[1] 'The concept of demand is not Freudian. It was developed by Jacques Lacan, who linked it with need and desire...arises only from speech'.[2]

Demand forms part of Lacan's 'return to the theory of desire outlined by Kojeve',[3] and was used by him against the approach to language acquisition favored by ego psychology.

Contents

Language acquisition

For Lacan, 'all speech is demand; it presupposes the Other to whom it is addressed, whose very signifiers it takes over in its formulation': demand is thus the result of the effect 'the acquisition of language ha[s] on...biological needs'.[4] Traditionally, psychoanalysis had recognised that 'acquisition of the faculty of speech...is a decisive step in the formation of the ego', and that 'the child's earliest speech is a charm directed toward forcing the external world and fate to do those things that have been conjured up in words'.[5] Ego psychology accepted that 'this first "I" is an "I" seeking satisfaction, an "I" of wants..."I wanna"'; but perhaps celebrated too easily 'how language becomes a means for control of body impulses'.[6]

Lacan by contrast stressed the more sinister side of man's early submergence in language, pointing out how 'demand constitutes the Other as already possessing the "privilege" of satisfying needs', and indeed how the child's biological needs are themselves altered by 'the condition that is imposed on him by the existence of the discourse, to make his need pass through the defiles of the signifier'.[7] The very act of 'speaking the demand alters it, and the child who receives the demanded object will discover that he no longer wants it. Love...is no longer sufficient, and the child has entered into the world of desire'.[8]

Desire

In Lacanian thought, a demand results when a lack in the Real is transformed into the Symbolic medium of language. Whether or not demands achieve their apparent aims, they are always successful in the sense that all parapraxes or slips of the tongue are successful - they faithfully express unconscious signifying formations. But because the Real is never totally symbolizable, a residue or kernel of desire is left behind by every demand, representing a lost surplus of jouissance for the subject. For Lacan, 'desire is situated in dependence on demand - which, by being articulated in signifiers, leaves a metonymic remainder which runs under it'.[9] Inherently 'frustrated demand is what gives birth to desire'[10]: "Don't give me what I ask for, that's not it."

The Other's demands

Lacan describes 'the Mother [as] the real Other of demand';[11] and for post-Lacanians, 'demand cannot be conceived independently of the infant's identification with the discourse that the mother expresses in response to the baby's cries, smiles, gurgling, and gestures....The child is also divided from its own real demand by identifying with whatever part of that demand the mother expresses'.[12]

The result in the neurotic may be a dominance of 'the Parental Other, the Other of (or as) demand'; as well as of the objects 'demanded by the Other: grades, diplomas, success, marriage, children - all the things usually associated with anxiety in neurosis'.[13] Lacan considered that for the neurotic 'the demand of the Other assumes the function of an object in his phantasy...this prevalence given by the neurotic to demand'.[14]

Transference

Lacan considered that 'the transference...is formulated at first, in the discourse of the patient, as demand'.[15] Through such demands, 'the whole past opens up right down to early infancy. The subject has never done anything other than demand, he could not have survived otherwise, and...regression shows nothing other than a return to the present of signifiers used in demands'.[16] He also stressed 'the terrible temptation that must face the analyst to respond however little to demand', even if only 'in the form of the demand to cure'.[17]

François Roustang however 'challenges this Lacanian practice...and suggests that the demand of transference love is not necessarily a demand for the end of the analysis, but a demand for the analyst to move his or her position'.[18]

See also

References

  1. ^ A. Lemaire, Jacques Lacan (1979) p. 165
  2. ^ Gabriel Balbo, "Demand"
  3. ^ David Macey, "Introduction", Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (London 1994) p. xxviii
  4. ^ Alan Sheridan, "Translator's Note", Lacan, Four p. 278
  5. ^ Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (London 1946) p. 46
  6. ^ Selma H. Fraiberg, The Magic Years (New York 1987) p. 133-4 and p. 115
  7. ^ Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection (London 1997) p. 286 and p. 264
  8. ^ Stuart Schneiderman, Returning to Freud (New York 1980) p. 5
  9. ^ Lacan, Four p. 154
  10. ^ Philip Hill, Lacan for Beginners (London 1997) p. 66
  11. ^ Lacan, Ecrits p. 321
  12. ^ Gabriel Balbo "Demand"
  13. ^ Bruce Fink, The Lacanian Subject (Princeton 1997) p. 189 and p. 87
  14. ^ Lacan, Ecrits p. 321
  15. ^ Lacan, Four p. 235
  16. ^ Lacan, Ecrits p. 254-5
  17. ^ Lacan, Ecrits p. 276
  18. ^ Jan Campbell, Psychoanalysis and the Time of Life (2006) p. 84

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - krav, efterspørgsel
v. tr. - kræve, behøve, kræve oplysning om
v. intr. - opkræve

idioms:

  • demand led    drevet af efterspørgsel
  • demand pull    efterspørgselspres
  • in demand    efterspurgt
  • make demands on    stille krav om
  • on demand    på forlangende

Nederlands (Dutch)
(ver)eisen, vragen, manen, vorderen, eis, vraag/behoefte

Français (French)
n. - demande, exigence, revendication, réclamation, demande (d'aide, d'argent), avertissement (d'avoir à payer), (Comm, Écon) demande
v. tr. - exiger, réclamer de, revendiquer, réclamer
v. intr. - demander, faire une demande, se renseigner

idioms:

  • demand led    dirigé par la demande
  • demand pull    par la demande
  • in demand    demandé, recherché
  • make demands on    exiger beaucoup de
  • on demand    (payable) sur demande/sur présentation, en demande

Deutsch (German)
v. - fordern, verlangen
n. - Forderung, Verlangen, (econ.) Nachfrage

idioms:

  • demand led    Nachfragesog-
  • demand pull    Nachfragesog
  • in demand    gesucht, gefragt
  • make demands on    Anforderungen stellen an
  • on demand    auf Verlangen

Ελληνική (Greek)
v. - απαιτώ, αξιώνω, (ε)ρωτώ, ζητώ (να πληροφορηθώ)
n. - απαίτηση, αξίωση, (οικον.) ζήτηση

idioms:

  • demand led    (οικον.) επηρεαζόμενος από τη ζήτηση
  • demand pull    (πληθωρισμός) ζήτησης, δημιουργούμενος από τη ζήτηση
  • in demand    σε ζήτηση
  • make demands on    έχω απαιτήσεις από
  • on demand    (οικον.) επί τη εμφανίσει

Italiano (Italian)
richiedere, esigere, intimare, richiesta, ingiunzione

idioms:

  • be in demand    essere richiesto
  • demand led    a richiesta
  • demand pull    fattore inflazionario
  • in demand    richiesto
  • make demands on    esigere da
  • on demand    a richiesta

Português (Portuguese)
v. - demandar, exigir
n. - demanda (f), procura (f)

idioms:

  • be in demand    ser solicitado, estar em demanda
  • demand led    mercado (m) dominado pela demanda (Econ.)
  • demand pull    sob pressão da demanda
  • in demand    altamente desejado
  • make demands on    fazer exigências
  • on demand    à vista

Русский (Russian)
требовать, требование, спрос

idioms:

  • be in demand    пользоваться спросом
  • demand led    увеличение чего-либо из-за спроса
  • demand pull    инфляция из-за избытка денег в экономии
  • in demand    пользующийся спросом
  • make demands on    требовать, потребовать
  • on demand    по предъявлении, согласно просьбе

Español (Spanish)
n. - exigencia, requerimiento, demanda, petición, solicitud, reclamación
v. tr. - requerir, pedir, solicitar, exigir, reclamar, llamar, demandar
v. intr. - requerir, pedir, solicitar, exigir, reclamar, demandar

idioms:

  • demand led    dirigido por la demanda
  • demand pull    atracción de la demanda
  • in demand    popular, con demanda o salida
  • make demands on    exigir
  • on demand    a petición, libre acceso

Svenska (Swedish)
v. - begära, kräva
n. - efterfrågan, begäran, anspråk

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
要求, 需要, 需求, 请求, 查问, 盘诘, 传唤, 询问

idioms:

  • demand led    按照要求做
  • demand pull    需求膨胀
  • in demand    所需要的
  • make demands on    要求
  • on demand    一经要求...

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 要求, 需要, 需求
v. tr. - 要求, 請求, 查問, 盤詰, 需要, 傳喚
v. intr. - 要求, 請求, 詢問

idioms:

  • demand led    按照要求做
  • demand pull    需求膨脹
  • in demand    所需要的
  • make demands on    要求
  • on demand    一經要求...

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 요구, 수요, 심문
v. tr. - 요구하다, 캐묻다, 필요로 하다
v. intr. - 요구하다, 심문하다

idioms:

  • in demand    요구 중인, 찾아지고 있는
  • make demands on    ~의 많은 노력, 금전 등을 필요로 한다

日本語 (Japanese)
v. - 要求する, 必要とする, 尋ねる
n. - 要求, 需要

idioms:

  • be in demand    需要がある
  • demand led    需要先行
  • demand pull    需要過剰インフレ
  • in demand    需要のある, 人気のある
  • make demands on    要求する
  • on demand    請求のあり次第

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(فعل) يطلب شئ بقوة, يحتاج الى, يتطلب (الاسم) عمليه طلب شئ بقوة, الحاجه والقدرة على شرا شئ أو خدمه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮דרישה, תביעה, ביקוש‬
v. tr. - ‮הצריך, דרש, תבע‬
v. intr. - ‮הצריך, דרש, תבע‬


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