Neutralization and Sublimation—Observations on Young Children1

The problems with which Hartmann2 found himself confronted when surveying the concept of sublimation, its history and its vicissitudes, are familiar to me from a similar but much more restricted attempt which I undertook some years ago (Kris, 1952).

In this publication my attention was focused on art and creative activity. I was at the time faced with the fact that sublimation was being used to designate both transformations of energy and displacements of goal; that is, activities in which this transformed energy was being discharged. In my discussion I suggested that the term neutralization could be conveniently used to designate the relevant energy transformations, and that the term sublimation might be reserved for the displacements of goal. This terminological division, I thought, would help to avoid misunderstandings which tend to arise because of the fact that displacements of goal can take place without the energy used in the activity having been neutralized, or because these activities can be continued when the formerly neutralized energy has become deneutralized (i.e., "instinctualized," "sexualized" or "aggressivized"). The use of the terms neutralization and sublimation as two relatively independent variables seems useful for the following reasons: The division preserves the term sublimation and attaches it to its original meaning. However, my attention was centered on the study of a specific activity, i.e., "art," and I believe that the study of specific activities represents an important subject for future psychoanalytic investigations. "It seems possible not only to organize the structural characteristics of various types of activity according to the opportunities they offer for more or less direct discharge