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Sublimation is traditionally distinguished from repression, though both serve defensive purposes, by virtue of sublimation being a conscious and constructive process. While Freud (1930) considered repression a means for the control of impulses, he recognized the superiority of sublimation which provided not only a control but an “enhancement.”
Sublimation of instinct is an especially conspicuous feature of cultural development; it is what makes it possible for higher psychical activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such an important part in civilized life. (p. 97)
In general, theorists who have used Freud's work as a basis for social critique have acknowledged, but not emphasized, this difference, instead understanding both repression and sublimation as tools of society in the alienation of human beings from their individual desires. An exception is Mitchell (1974), who criticizes radical and feminist interpreters of Freud for reducing the meaning of such concepts as sublimation, making of them explanations of individual and social life far more one-dimensional than intended by Freud.
Feminists have given little consideration to the concept of sublimation, associated as it is with the objectionable oedipal theory. Mitchell (1974) and Chodorow (1978) are the exceptions in their careful review of Freud's ideas on feminine character development; however, their emphasis is on the family as the psychological mediator between patriarchy and individual sex role acquisition, not the significance of the inclination or capacity for sublimation itself. I propose to discuss further the significance of the capacity for sublimation to the individual