With the huge caveat I’m basing this entirely on a documentary, I was struck by the overlap between René Girard and Lacan’s analysis of desire. Both seek to address the question “why do we want what we want?” but Girard does it through a singular concept of mimesis, the essentially imitative nature of desire. We want what someone else wants, perhaps imagining the happiness we impute to them will become ours if we get it. Once you give concrete examples of mimetic desire it starts to sound very Lacanian. Likewise the focus on overcoming mimetic desire, which is a similar impulse to the Lacanian clinical aim of learning to ‘enjoy your enjoyment’ rather than being trapped in the impulse to placate the Other.
While he recognises this can take many forms it seems like he’s essentially trying to map desire but on a much more straight forward graph then Lacan’s famously bewildering graphs of desire 👇
Very interesting looking paper about this to explore later: https://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/articles/a-triangle-of-thoughts-girard-freud-lacan/
Mark Carrigan 