This paper addresses sublimation in Gustav Mahler's Symphony no. 8 through Lacan's (1986, 1992) notion of das Ding, the Thing. The author reads Lacan as using das Ding, a term taken from Freud, as shorthand for archaic experience. Lacan provides a reference point when he states that “the Kleinian doctrine places the mother's body there” (1992, p. 117). Das Ding refers to unmediated contact with the Other, usually mother, in which traces of a primitive gratification mark the loss of immediacy, point to a lost object, and establish the trajectory of desire. Sublimation is an attempt to bring us into contact with das Ding.