Desiring something is often confused with wanting something and we must understand that they are two concepts with a different meaning. To understand both concepts within the field of psychology, in the following PsicologíaOnline article, we are going to explain in detail what the difference between wanting and wanting something.
The nature of desire
With recent advances in neurobiology, it seems that the rule of emotion is undermining the reign of reason. By scrutinizing the conscious mind we emphasize the importance of analysis and reason, while by diving into the unconscious mind we come across passions and perceptions. From Plato we have inherited the strange idea that reason is the civilized part of the brainand that we would be happy as long as reason dominated primitive passions.
The unconscious is impulsive, emotional, sensitive and unpredictable. It has its leaks and needs supervision. But it can be brilliant and, at the same time, infuriating. The impetuous desires They are forged in our unconscious, shackles consciousness and reason. Our conscious desires are mystifications of the impulses that sustain us and the commands internalized in our learning.
Perhaps human culture exists largely to repress these natural species impulses. We can raise the conjecture that culture orders, formalizes the appropriate path to implement the impulses that boil in our soul. When heated impulses are repressed we feel like a pressure cooker, with no safety valve, overflowing and leading us astray.
The most genuine impulse is to be. We all want to be one way or another. Spinoza understood that conatus (persevering in being) is the essence that sustains our finite existence. At first glance, the idea could be put in quotation marks both with the confirmation that the suicide’s impulse is not to be and with the proof of the overflowing aggressiveness that emerges in times of war.
The impulses that sustain us
Freud maintains that along with the irresistible impulse to love in our psyche lies the death drive. Dying is incorporated into our cells, into our very atoms. There are two elemental forces in the universe. One attracts matter to matter. It is the way life originates and the way it spreads. In physics this force is called gravity; in psychology, love. The other force destroys matter. It is the force of disunification, disintegration, destruction. For Freud, science does not understand morality, there is no such thing as good or evil. The death drive is part of our biology. The prototypical example can be found in cancer; If a cell does not die, it continues dividing, reproducing incessantly, in an abnormal way.
What we want
What we want often does not coincide with what we desire. Desire requires lack, while wanting implies presence. We hate or love something because it demands a response from us, a certain decision. We desire what is absent, that is why passionate love ignites and explodes in the chiaroscuro. When we live in clarity, desires hibernate, although incandescent – by the very fact of being alive – they push us to explore unknown territories.
When wishes come true
Rarely do our wishes come true. In most occasions, We come across fissures or sinkholes. When we wish for someone, placid wealth, a family or an artistic life we imagine or fantasize. While imagination can generate utopias, fantasy generates chimeras. Stubborn reality boxes us in, draws the limits of our desires. Nietzsche, exalter of the life lived, exhorts us to amor fati. Loving what happens to us and getting rid of the escapist vertigo for a coming paradise. Desire is a journey, a longing to be somewhere else.
Happiness theorists, championed by psychologist Csikszentmihalyi, understand happiness as flow. Csikszentmihalyi defines flow as a state in which the person is completely absorbed in an activity for his or her own pleasure and enjoyment, during which time flies and actions, thoughts and movements follow one another without pause. The psychologist and the philosopher agree: soak up the present, wanting what life offers us. Thus, at first glance it seems that our nature pushes us to constantly desire, to imagine or fantasize other possible worlds. Happiness would be an effort to learn to love, to see what happens to us in a different way.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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