You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Sublimation is one of the bases of cultural development and an indispensable part of our daily life. As Freud has stated, it consists in the desexualization and transformation of repressed phallic and pregenital wishes into functions socially approved by the society in question. In the words of Freud, who introduced the term, 'Sublimation of instinct is an especially conspicuous feature of cultural evolution; this it is that makes it possible for the higher mental operations, scientific, artistic, ideological activities to play such an important part in civilized life'.
A great deal has been written about sublimation, and still the problem is replete with unsolved riddles. Instead of surveying the literature, let us refer to a paper of Géza Róheim1 in which, in addition to presenting some excellent ideas of his own, he gives a cross section of the publications on the subject. Róheim comes to the following conclusions:
… the fundamental situation [in neurosis] is always that the superego represses the id strivings. In sublimation, however, id strivings reconquer the ground in a disguised form, and if they are not again subjugated by the superego, neurosis is avoided. In contrast to the prevailing view, this would mean that in sublimation we have no ground wrested from the id by the sugerego, but quite the contrary, what we have is superego or ego territory inundated by the id' (p. 349). 'The ego allied with the id is victorious and ousts the superego. In neurosis the depressive state dominates, in sublimation the manic' (p. 347).
In applying his newer formulation of magic to sublimation, Róheim states: