Sublimation (psychology)

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For other uses, see Sublimation (disambiguation).




The first thinker to use the word in a psychological sense was the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.[3] In the opening section of Human, All Too Human entitled ‘Of first and last things’, Nietzsche wrote:

There is, strictly speaking, neither unselfish conduct, nor a wholly disinterested point of view. Both are simply sublimations in which the basic element seems almost evaporated and betrays its presence only to the keenest observation. All that we need and that could possibly be given us in the present state of development of the sciences, is a chemistry of the moral, religious, aesthetic conceptions and feeling, as well as of those emotions which we experience in the affairs, great and small, of society and civilization, and which we are sensible of even in solitude. But what if this chemistry established the fact that, even in its domain, the most magnificent results were attained with the basest and most despised ingredients? Would many feel disposed to continue such investigations? Mankind loves to put by the questions of its origin and beginning: must one not be almost inhuman in order to follow the opposite course?[4]

Psychoanalytic theory[edit]

In Freud's psychoanalytical theory, erotic energy is allowed a limited amount of expression, owing to the constraints of human society and civilization itself. It therefore requires other outlets, especially if an individual is to remain psychologically balanced.

Sublimation (German: Sublimierung) is the process of transforming libido into "socially useful" achievements, including artistic, cultural and intellectual pursuits. Freud considered this psychical operation to be fairly salutary compared to the others that he identified, such as repression, displacement, denial, reaction formation, intellectualisation and projection. In the The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (1936), his daughter, Anna, classes sublimation as one of the major 'defence mechanisms' of the psyche.[5]

Freud got the idea of sublimation whilst reading The Harz Journey by Heinrich Heine. The story is about Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach who cut off the tails of dogs he encountered in childhood and later became a surgeon. Freud concluded that sublimation could be observed in an action performed many times throughout one's life, which firstly appears sadistic, though is ultimately refined into an activity which is of benefit to mankind.[6]

Interpersonal psychoanalysis[edit]

Harry Stack Sullivan, the pioneer of interpersonal psychoanalysis, defined sublimation as the unwitting substitution of a partial satisfaction with social approval for the pursuit of a direct satisfaction which would be contrary to one's ideals or to the judgment of social censors and other important people who surround one. The substitution might not be quite what we want, but it is the only way that we can get part of our satisfaction and feel secure, too. Sullivan documented that all sublimatory things are more complicated than the direct satisfaction of the needs to which they apply. They entail no disturbance of consciousness, no stopping to think why they must be done or what the expense connected with direct satisfaction would be. In successful sublimation, Sullivan observed extraordinarily efficient handling of a conflict between the need for a satisfaction and the need for security without perturbation of awareness.

Sexual sublimation[edit]

Sexual sublimation, also known as sexual transmutation, is the attempt, especially among some religious traditions, to transform sexual impulses or "sexual energy" into creative energy. In this context, sublimation is the transference of sexual energy, or libido, into a physical act or a different emotion in order to avoid confrontation with the sexual urge, which is itself contrary to the individual's belief or ascribed religious belief. It is based on the idea that "sexual energy" can be used to create a spiritual nature which in turn can create more sensual works, instead of one's sexuality being unleashed "raw."[7][8][9] The classical example in Western religions is clerical celibacy.

As espoused in the Tanya[citation needed], Hasidic Jewish mysticism views sublimation of the animal soul as an essential task in life, wherein the goal is to transform animalistic and earthy cravings for physical pleasure into holy desires to connect with God.

Different schools of thought describe general sexual urges as carriers of spiritual essence, and have the varied names of vital energy, vital winds (prana), spiritual energy, ojas, shakti, tummo, or kundalini. It is also believed that undergoing sexual sublimation can facilitate a mystical awakening in an individual.[10][11][12]

Sublimation according to Jung[edit]

C. G. Jung believed sublimation to be mystical in nature, thus differing fundamentally from Freud's view of the concept. For Freud, sublimation helped explain the plasticity of the sexual instincts (and their convertibility to non-sexual ends). The concept also underpinned his psychoanalytical theories which showed the human psyche at the mercy of conflicting impulses (such as the super-ego and the id). Jung criticized Freud for obscuring the alchemical origins of sublimation and for attempting instead to make the concept appear scientifically credible:


This criticism extends from the private sphere of his correspondence (as above) to specific papers he published on psychoanalysis:

Freud invented the idea of sublimation to save us from the imaginary claws of the unconscious. But what is real, what actually exists, cannot be alchemically sublimated, and if anything is apparently sublimated it never was what a false interpretation took it to be.[14]

Sublimation according to Lacan[edit]

Das Ding[edit]

Lacan’s exposition of sublimation is framed within a discussion about the relationship of psychoanalysis and ethics within the seventh book of his seminars.[15] Lacanian sublimation is defined with reference to the concept Das Ding (later in his career Lacan termed this objet petit a). Das Ding is the German for ‘the thing’ though Lacan conceives it as an abstract notion and one of the defining characteristics of the human condition. Broadly speaking it is the vacuum one experiences as a human being and which one endeavours to fill with differing human relationships, objects and experiences all of which serve to plug a gap in one’s psychical needs. For this reason Lacan also considers Das Ding to be a non-Thing or vacuole.[16] The relationships which one relies on to overcome the vacuity of Das Ding are always insufficient in wholly satisfying the individual.

Lacan considers Das Ding a lost object ever in the process of being recuperated by Man. Temporarily the individual will be duped by his or her own psyche into believing that this object, this person or this circumstance can be relied upon to satisfy his needs in a stable and enduring manner when in fact ‘it is in its nature that the object as such is lost. It will never be found again. Something is there while one waits for something better, or worse, but which one wants’[17] and again ‘[Das Ding] is to be found at the most as something missed. One doesn’t find it, but only its pleasurable associations.’[17] Human life unravels as a series of detours in the quest for the lost object or the absolute Other of the individual : ‘The pleasure principle governs the search for the object and imposes detours which maintain the distance to Das Ding in relation to its end.’[18]

Lacanian Sublimation[edit]

Lacanian sublimation centres to a large part on the notion of Das Ding. His general formula for sublimation is that 'it raises an object [...] to the dignity of The Thing.[19] Lacan considers these objects (whether human, aesthetic, credal or philosophical) to be signifiers which are representative of Das Ding and that ‘the function of the pleasure principle is, in effect, to lead the subject from signifier to signifier, by generating as many signifiers as are required to maintain at as low a level as possible the tension that regulates the whole functioning of the psychic apparatus.’[20] Furthermore, man is the 'artisan of his support system',[20] in other words, he creates or finds the signifiers which delude him into believing he has overcome the emptiness of Das Ding.

Lacan also considers sublimation to be process of creation ex nihilo[21] (creating out of nothing), whereby an object, human or manufactured, comes to be defined in relation to the emptiness of Das Ding. Lacan’s prime example of this is the courtly love of the troubadours and Minnesänger[19] who dedicated their poetic verse to a love-object which was not only unreachable (and therefore experienced as something missing) but whose existence and desirability also centred around a hole (the vagina[22]). For Lacan such courtly love was ‘a paradigm of sublimation’.[23] He affirms that the word ‘troubadour’ is etymologically linked to the Provençal verb trobar (like the French trouver) ‘to find.’[24] If we consider again the definition of Das Ding, it is dependent precisely on the expectation of the subject to re-find the lost object in the mistaken belief that it will continue to satisfy him (or her).

Lacan maintains that creation ex nihilo operates in other noteworthy fields as well. In pottery for example vases are created around an empty space.[25] They are primitive and even primordial artefacts which have benefited mankind not only in the capacity of utensils but also as metaphors of (cosmic) creation ex nihilo. Lacan cites Heidegger who situates the vase between the earthly (raising clay from the ground) and the ethereal (pointing upwards to receive).[26] In architecture, Lacan asserts, buildings are designed around an empty space and in art paintings proceed from an empty canvas,[27] and often depict empty spaces through perspective.

In myth, Pan pursues the nymph Syrinx who is transformed into hollow reeds in order to avoid the clutches of the God, who subsequently cuts the reeds down in anger and transforms them into what we today call panpipes[22] (both reeds and panpipes rely on their hollowness for the production of sound).

Lacan briefly remarks that religion and science are also based around emptiness. In regard to religion, Lacan refers the reader to Freud, stating that much obsessional religious behaviour can be attributed to the avoidance of the primordial emptiness of Das Ding or in the respecting of it.[27] As for the discourse of science this is based on the notion of Verwerfung[28] (the German word for ‘dismissal’) which results in the dismissing, foreclosing or exclusion of the notion of Das Ding presumably because it defies empirical categorisation.

In fiction[edit]

  • One of the best known examples in Western literature is in Thomas Mann's novella, Death in Venice, where the protagonist Gustav von Aschenbach, a famous writer, sublimates his desire for an adolescent boy into writing poetry.
  • In Alberto Moravia's novel, ''Io e lui'' (''Him and Me'', 1971), the protagonist is in a constant unsuccessful quest to overcome the power of his large penis, so that he sublimates into a serious film director.
  • In Psychological Science: Mind, Brain and Behavior, by Michael Gazzaniga and Todd F. Heatherton, a more sinister example is given in which a sadist becomes a surgeon or a dentist - A direct example of this is in the musical and movie Little Shop of Horrors characterized in the descriptively sadist character of Orin Scrivello who follows his mother's advice to become a dentist, quoting her "You'll find a way/to make your natural tendencies pay (...) Son, be a dentist/People will pay you to be inhumane."
  • Agatha Christie's novel And Then There Were None features a villain whose line of work as a judge, dealing out harsh sentences to guilty criminals, had previously permitted him to sublimate his homicidal urges.
  • Sexual transmutation was quoted in Napoleon Hill's book "Think and Grow Rich" (1937), and was illustrated as a principle of success.
  • In the allegorical poem Wind in the Afternoon by Dr Tapan Kumar Pradhan, the feeble attempt of human beings at sexual sublimation has been symbolically described through the imagery of two ogling streetside onlookers following the movement of a sanitary napkin and an empty tea carton being blown away during a sandstorm.
  • In a Criminal Minds episode The Bittersweet Science, it's mentioned that children with a violent past grow up to be police officers or soldiers, not necessarily boxers.
  • In The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson, sublimation is presented as the source of the Neo-Victorians' dominance: " was precisely their emotional repression that made the Victorians the richest and most powerful people in the world. Their ability to submerge their feelings, far from pathological, was rather a kind of mystical art that gave them nearly magical power over Nature and over the more intuitive tribes. Such was also the strength of the Nipponese."

See also[edit]


  1. ^ Sigmund Freud, ‘Civilisation and Its Discontents’ (1930) in The Standard Edition Of The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud – The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and its Discontents, and Other Works, trans. by James Strachey (Hogarth Press; London, 1961), vol. XXI, 79–80
  2. ^ Wade, Carol and Carol Tavris, Psychology, Sixth Edition (Prentice Hall, 2000) 478. ISBN 0-321-04931-4
  3. ^ Walter Arnold Kaufmann, Nietzsche: philosopher, psychologist, antichrist, Chapter 7, section II, p. 219
  4. ^ "The Project Gutenberg eBook of Human, All Too Human, by Friedrich Nietzsche.". 
  5. ^ Anna Freud, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (Karnac Books, 2011), p. 44
  6. ^ Geller, J.(2009). "Of Snips . . . and Puppy Dog Tails": Freud's Sublimation of Judentum. American Imago66(2), 169-184. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Retrieved April 6, 2012, from Project MUSE database.
  7. ^ Swami Sivananda Saraswati. "Brahmacharya (Celibacy)". Retrieved 2006-07-27. 
  8. ^ Samael Aun Weor. "The Transmutation of Sexual Energy". Retrieved 2006-07-27. 
  9. ^ Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami. "Cognizantability: Section 2, The Basic Laws of Transmutation". Retrieved 2006-07-27. 
  10. ^ Swami Sivananda Saraswati. "Techniques of Sex Sublimation". Archived from the original on 2006-07-17. Retrieved 2006-07-27. 
  11. ^ Swami Krishnananda Saraswati. "Brahmacharya – An Outlook of Consciousness". Archived from the original on 2006-06-15. Retrieved 2006-07-27. 
  12. ^ Swami Chidananda. "The Role of Celibacy in the Spiritual Life". Retrieved 2006-07-27. 
  13. ^ Carl Jung, Letters, ed. By G. Adler and A. Jaffé (Princeton University Press; Princeton, 1974), vol. 1, 171
  14. ^ C. G. Jung, Dreams: (From Volumes 4, 8, 12, and 16 of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung),(Princeton University Press, 2012), p.100
  15. ^ The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960 - The Seminar of Jacques Lacan - Book VII.
  16. ^ Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960 - The Seminar of Jacques Lacan - Book VII, p. 134, p. 150
  17. ^ a b Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960 - The Seminar of Jacques Lacan - Book VII, p. 52
  21. ^ Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960 - The Seminar of Jacques Lacan - Book VII, pp. 115-127

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