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Parveen Adams opens this edited volume with the statement that to date the ‘writings on psychoanalysis and art have always been disappointing’ (p. vi). I presume that she is not targeting, or has read, the many contemporary publications within this field, rather she is preoccupied with the legacy of Freud in the claim that artistic endeavour is the manifestation of the transformation of unacceptable libidinal desire to serve social aims. That is to say, in the words of the series editor, Adams believes that this edition of essays will ‘breathe fresh life into the concept of sublimation’ rescuing it ‘from its dull duty of channelling sexual energy into acceptable cultural forms’ (p. xii).
But what does Adams provide in order to mitigate this presumed historically disappointing trajectory - a trajectory dominated by post-Freudian aesthetics of the British school, exemplified by Segal and Milner? Adams indicates that this publication has a dual purpose. Firstly, to take up the issue of sublimation and, secondly, to concentrate on the symptom (synthome) with reference to Lacan's theory of artistic creation. She explains that the context for exploring sublimation derives from three standpoints. '(1) the idea of the satisfaction of the drive (… accounted for in different ways); (2) the social nature of sublimation that is insisted on by both Freud and Lacan; and (3) the link between sublimation and ethics that is drawn from Lacan's seminar on ethics in 1960 (p. xii).