Sublimation and Sexualization—A Case Report

From the psychological no less than from the social point of view, sublimation is the most valuable defense elaborated by the personality against unbridled instinctual gratification. But it has failed sufficiently to engage the attention of psychoanalysts, perhaps because it is the least pathological of the defenses. This gap is even more apparent in psychoanalytic literature on children. Furthermore, the term is as yet loosely defined and may be discussed in the literature under various headings. Thus, Anna Freud's basic book, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence(4), gives only three sentences to sublimation as such, but in the discussion of other defences, as "altruistic renunciation" and "intellectualization", overlapping with sublimation is implied.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the dynamics of sublimation runs a parallel course with the dynamics of the neurosis and reflects every major conflict. In the analysis of Peter, interference with sublimation by persistent sexualization of ego functions unfolded itself like a slow-motion film. Valuable light was thus shed on sublimation as a developmental process.

Peter was brought to analysis at the age of not quite 11, because he was an uneasy child, with compulsive habits, mild eating and sleeping disturbances, fears at night, dependent and aggressive behavior toward his parents, especially the mother, and achievement much below par. He was diagnosed as a compulsive neurotic with strong sado-masochistic tendencies and well-established fetishism. Though a very intelligent boy of very intelligent and cultured parents, he was an indifferent pupil, with very short attention span both in his school studies and extracurricular activities. His power of concentration was seriously impaired. The patient himself was aware of this problem from the beginning of the analysis. He envied the boys who showed sustained interest in their hobbies and considered himself "different" in this respect.

In the first analy