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January 30, 1951. SUBLIMATION AND THE PROBLEM OF INSTINCTS—ILLUSTRATIVE CASE OF COMIC TALENT. Edward Harkavy, M.D.
The case history is presented of a woman, the outcome of whose Oedipal attachment to her father was a regression to a pregenital, ambivalent relationship to her mother, which became the immediate source of her unconscious conflicts in later life. A technique of comic impersonation, which was a striking trait of her character, was interpreted as a temporarily stable position between the disturbing alternatives of activity and passivity, being 'whole' and being castrated, being clean and being messy. Dr. Harkavy calls attention to a stage in psychological development 'between the formation of body-ego nuclei and narcissistic object relations', which he proposes to call the neurenteric stage, by analogy with a phase of embryonic development during which the neural tube and the gastrular mouth are connected for a short time by a structure called the neurenteric canal.
Dr. Hartmann observed that it had not proved possible to demonstrate a necessary connection between her comic impersonation and specific elements in the patient's instinctual and ego make-up. He also commented on the relation between sublimation, identification, desexualized energies used by the ego, and the stability of sublimations. Dr. Nunberg discussed the complexity of the concept of sublimation, and its dependence by definition on cultural standards.