The author discusses Laurent Danon-Boileau’s idea that the origin of sublimation is related to a lack of unconscious ideation, requiring the processing of excessive traumatic excitation. She therefore proposes to introduce the role of the superego in the realization of sublimation, an active process that involves finding an object in the world that can be transformed. Its elaborative value for the psyche depends on the relations between sublimation and identification. A clinical vignette illustrates the fact that a rupture in sublimation paves the way for the elaboration of a whole section of the history that it was obscuring. Some clarifications are offered on the differentiation between “ordinary” sublimations and “exceptional” sublimations.