Desires Are Forces Between the Desired and the Desirer
metaphor
Source: Physics → Mental Experience
Categories: cognitive-sciencelinguisticspsychology
From: Master Metaphor List
Transfers
Desire is a force field. The desirer and the desired object are two bodies in a physics of attraction: the desired pulls, the desirer is pulled, and the strength of desire is the magnitude of the force. This metaphor maps Newtonian force dynamics — attraction, resistance, acceleration, equilibrium — onto the psychological experience of wanting, giving desire a spatial structure with directionality, distance, and intensity.
Key structural parallels:
- Attraction as gravitational or magnetic pull — “I was drawn to her.” “The idea has a magnetic appeal.” “He gravitated toward the job.” The desired object exerts a pull on the desirer, as if desire were a physical field. The stronger the desire, the stronger the pull. This maps the inverse-square intuition: closer objects of desire feel more compelling than distant ones.
- Resistance as counterforce — “I resisted the temptation.” “She held back from buying it.” “He fought the urge.” The desirer can exert counterforce against the pull of the desired. Self-control is literally pushing back against a physical force. The effort required maps from the magnitude of the opposing force.
- Yielding as being overcome — “I gave in to temptation.” “She couldn’t resist.” “He was overcome by desire.” When the force of desire exceeds the counterforce of self-control, the desirer moves toward the desired object. This is the force-dynamic agonist/antagonist structure that Talmy identified: two forces in opposition, with one eventually prevailing.
- Distance as availability — “So close, yet so far.” “The goal is within reach.” “She was beyond his grasp.” The desired object occupies a position in psychological space, and desire is partly a function of the perceived distance. Close objects exert stronger force; distant objects are easier to resist.
- Desire as tension — “The tension between them was palpable.” “He was torn between two options.” “The pull of competing desires.” When multiple forces act simultaneously (multiple desires, or desire versus duty), the desirer experiences tension — the felt strain of opposing forces. The physics of vector addition maps onto the psychology of ambivalence.
Limits
- Physical forces are symmetric; desire is not — Newton’s third law dictates that if A attracts B, B attracts A with equal force. Desire is not symmetric: you can desire something that has no reciprocal pull toward you. Unrequited love, longing for the unattainable, coveting what is indifferent to you — these common experiences break the physics. The metaphor must be selectively applied, dropping the reciprocity that is fundamental to actual force dynamics.
- The metaphor externalizes desire — by placing the source of force in the desired object (“it draws me”), the metaphor makes the desirer passive and the object active. This reverses the phenomenology: desire originates in the desirer, not in the desired. A chocolate cake does not exert force; the person wanting it generates the wanting. The metaphor systematically misattributes the origin of desire, which has consequences for moral reasoning (“it tempted me” deflects responsibility).
- Force drops off with distance; desire does not always — physical forces weaken with distance. But some desires intensify with unavailability. Forbidden fruit, nostalgia for lost things, and the allure of the unattainable all violate the inverse-distance mapping. Desire can increase precisely because the object is far away, which no physical force does.
- No conservation of desire — in physics, energy is conserved. In desire, satisfying one want does not necessarily reduce the total amount of wanting. Getting what you desire can generate new desires (hedonic treadmill), and multiple desires can coexist without depleting a shared resource. The metaphor imports an economy of force that does not match the psychology.
- The two-body model is too simple — the metaphor imagines desire as a dyadic relation: one desirer, one desired object, one force vector. But desire is often triangular (Girard’s mimetic desire: I want what you want because you want it) or diffuse (generalized restlessness without a specific object). The physics metaphor has no room for the social mediation of desire.
Expressions
- “Drawn to the idea” — intellectual desire as gravitational pull
- “Irresistible offer” — a desired object whose force exceeds any counterforce
- “The pull of home” — nostalgia as attraction at a distance
- “Magnetic personality” — a person whose desirability exerts force on others
- “I couldn’t resist” — yielding to desire as being overcome by force
- “Torn between two options” — competing desires as opposing force vectors
- “She gravitated toward the arts” — gradual movement toward what attracts
- “The attraction was undeniable” — desire as measurable physical force
- “Repelled by the idea” — aversion as the anti-force of desire
- “Within reach” — the desired object at a distance where the force is strongest
Origin Story
The Master Metaphor List (Lakoff, Espenson, and Schwartz 1991) catalogs DESIRES ARE FORCES BETWEEN THE DESIRED AND THE DESIRER as a specific instantiation of the broader PSYCHOLOGICAL FORCES ARE PHYSICAL FORCES mapping. Where the general mapping covers all psychological causation (compulsion, aversion, pressure), this specialization focuses on the particular force geometry of desire: a bidirectional field between two entities.
Talmy’s force-dynamics framework (1988) provides the theoretical machinery: desire is an agonist force, self-control is an antagonist force, and the outcome (action or restraint) depends on which force is stronger. Lakoff and Johnson (1999) discuss desire within their broader treatment of the embodied mind, arguing that the force-dynamic structure of desire is grounded in the infant’s bodily experience of reaching for objects and being physically restrained.
The metaphor connects to the entire family of force-based psychological mappings: OBLIGATIONS ARE FORCES, CAUSES ARE FORCES, and the specific case of LOVE IS A PHYSICAL FORCE.
References
- Lakoff, G., Espenson, J. & Schwartz, A. Master Metaphor List (1991), “Desires Are Forces Between the Desired and the Desirer”
- Talmy, L. “Force Dynamics in Language and Cognition” in Cognitive Science (1988)
- Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. Philosophy in the Flesh (1999), Chapter 14 — desire and force dynamics
- Kovecses, Z. Metaphor and Emotion (2000) — emotion as force
- Girard, R. Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (1961) — mimetic desire as a critique of the dyadic model
Related Entries
- Desire Is Hunger
- Psychological Forces Are Physical Forces
- Causes Are Forces
- Obligations Are Forces
- Love Is a Physical Force
Structural Neighbors
Entries from different domains that share structural shape. Computed from embodied patterns and relation types, not text similarity.
- Competition Is Competition for Desired Objects (economics/metaphor)
- Effect on Emotional Self Is Contact with Physical Self (embodied-experience/metaphor)
- Competition Is 1-on-1 Physical Aggression (war/metaphor)
- Status Is Up; Lack Of Status Is Down (embodied-experience/metaphor)
- Emotional Stability Is Maintaining Position (embodied-experience/metaphor)
- Competition Is a Race (journeys/metaphor)
- Love Is a Physical Force (embodied-experience/metaphor)
- Affection Is Warmth (embodied-experience/metaphor)
Structural Tags
Patterns: forceattractionnear-far
Relations: causecompete
Structure: equilibrium Level: primitive
Contributors: agent:metaphorex-miner