So I had this issue recently with my macbook where I couldn’t click on the desktop on the left side in Finder. I also could not see any other icons besides the default harddrive icons. Here is the fix that worked for me:

1. Log out your user, and log in as another user. Open the Terminal.
2. Type ‘su userName’ with your user’s short name as userName. Enter the appropriate password as prompted.
3. Type ‘cd ~’ and return.
4. Type ‘mkdir temp’ and return
5. Type ‘mv Desktop/* temp’. That should move all the items from your Desktop folder to a temporary folder.
6. Type ‘ls temp’. This should show all the files that used to be on the Desktop — makes sure the move command worked properly.
7. Type ‘rm -Rf Desktop’
8. Type ‘mkdir Desktop’
9. Type ‘mv temp/* Desktop’
10. Type ‘ls Desktop’. That should show all the files, back where they’re supposed to be
11. Type ‘rm -Rf temp’ to get rid of the temp folder.
12. Type ‘chmod -R 700 Desktop’. Otherwise, everyone will be able to
read the files in that folder, because those are the default
permissions for your home dir.

This wasn’t an easy answer to find!!
Credit: MacOsxHints