Sublimation

In psychology, sublimation is a defence mechanism through which an impulse or desire regarded as unacceptable, such as sexual drive or aggression, is redirected towards socially valued activities such as art, intellectual work or sport. The term comes from psychoanalytic theory, where Sigmund Freud placed it among the processes through which instinctual energy finds outlets that are not directly sexual. For Freud, sublimation was one of the highest forms of civilised life, since it allowed the energy of the drives to be turned into cultural creation without the subject having to repress it completely.

The word borrows its meaning from chemistry, where it designates the direct passage of a solid into a gas, and the metaphor suggests a transformation in which something rises into a different form without disappearing. Later psychoanalysts, such as Anna Freud, developed the notion within the study of the mechanisms of the ego. Outside psychoanalytic theory the concept also appears in other traditions, such as that of George Gurdjieff, who spoke of transforming sexual energy in order to reach a higher state of consciousness.

A simple example is a person with intense anger who channels it into boxing or into writing a novel with conflicted characters. In both cases the impulse does not vanish but takes an acceptable and productive form.

The concept remains debated. Some critics point out that it is hard to demonstrate empirically that an activity arises from sublimation rather than other motives, and that the notion can become so broad that it explains almost any behaviour. Others regard it as a useful tool for understanding the relationship between the life of the drives and culture, and it is still used in clinical practice as well as in literary and art criticism.