Sublimation is a drive vicissitude to be differentiated from desexualization and the production of unconscious formations. It combines a primary restraint of the drives, a short-circuiting of self-preservation, a reference to an ideal and a use of tangible concrete materials. The materiality of external tangible realities takes the place of narcissistic registration. The founding desexualization of narcissistic cathexes utilizes the tendency towards reduction to the inorganic state, while the creation of new realities is driven by the aspiration towards infinite extension. Freud’s work of sublimation unfolds in a succession of après-coups. Each stage offers the previous ones an intelligibility in terms of the anti-traumatic function they provide and their foundational function for psychic life. Sublimation creates a material that is supposed to be ideal. But through its creation it reintroduces differences and through them the experiences of lack that it sought to eliminate. It is infinite.