Notes on the Theory of Sublimation1

It has frequently happened, in psychoanalysis as in other field,s that concepts first devised to account for some more or less occasional observations were later used to refer to phenomena of a far more general nature than had been anticipated. In such cases, these concepts often preserve for a time the imprint of the specific situation they were originally meant to cover, but gradually detach themselves from the particular discoveries which had given rise to their formation. They get more or less integrated into the total field of experience and thought, which process often requires redefinition. To demonstrate this in detail would certainly be a worth-while subject for the historian of psychoanalysis. Suffice it here to remind you of Freud's concept of defense of the nineties, as compared to a later phase in which defense had acquired a structural definition and was recognized as one aspect of general psychology equally relevant for the development of the normal as of the later pathological individual. Or think how the conceptualization of aggression has changed, until finally aggression was realized to be, and defined as, one of the basic instinctual drives. As a third example, I may mention narcissism. Here, too, you will notice several reformulations; the fact that Freud has not quite consistently synchronized the concept of "narcissism" with the level of his later insights and theories has, in this case, led to quite some uncertainties and contradictions in psychoanalytic thinking and literature.

The subject of my contribution to this panel, the concept of sublimation, shows a somewhat similar development. When first used by Freud, "sublimation" referred to certain cultural or otherwise highly valued achievements and to their derivation from instinctual, which meant at the time sexual, sources. These phenomena were also studied as ways to avoid conflict while still achieving discharge, to escape the necessity of repression; their relations to the react