In Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic philosophy, lack (French: manque) is a concept that is always related to desire.
In his seminar Le transfert (1960–61) he states that lack is what causes desire to arise.
In "The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of Its Power" (Écrits) Lacan argues that desire is the metonymy of the lack of being (manque à être): the subject's lack of being is at the heart of the analytic experience and the very field in which the neurotic's passion is deployed.
The symbolic phallus is the concept of being the ultimate man, and having this is compared to having the divine gift of God.
In Anti-Oedipus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari postulate that desire does not arise from lack, but rather is a productive force (desiring-production) in itself.