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Ethics and Sublimation
Antoine Vergote — K.U. Leuven
In this paper I will alternate between the position
of a psychoanalyst who reflects on psychoanalysis
as a moral philosopher, and that of a psychoanalyst who views moral concepts from an analyst’s
point of view. By psychoanalysis I mean the
clinical practice and observations deriving from
Freud’s ideas and theoretical constructions, as
well as the necessary theoretical underpinnings on
which it rests. Jungian theory and practice,
though inspired by Freud, differ sharply from
Freudian theory and practice — as much as
Lamarck differs from Darwin. This is why Jung
himself referred to his own theory as ‘analytic
psychology’. To conflate them under a single
category as theologians are sometimes prone to
do, even before E. Drewermann, is a misleading
therapeutic and scientific ecumenism. In addition,
the word ‘sublimation’ occurs extremely rarely in
Jung’s works and has little meaning there. The
concept has no real place within his theory.
While ‘God’, Shiva, Christ, the devil, the holy
virgin mother, etc. may be the representative
forms of innate archetypes, it is not a sublimation
of drives that has raised them to the level of
psychological ‘religion’.
My decided choice for Freudian theory and
practice rests on experience, on epistemological
arguments and on philosophical-anthropological
convictions. This point of view, however, does
not mean that I think one should or can simply
repeat Freud’s practical hints and theoretical
statements. Precisely because Freud, like Newton
and Darwin, was the founder of a new science,
his theoretical concepts open up new fields for
observation and thought. In this paper, however, I
will not carry out any technical exegesis of
Freud’s texts and the discussion it has inspired.1
Ethics in sublimation, sublimation in ethics
The Vocabulary of Psychoanalysis, by Laplanche
and Pontalis, gives the following definition of
‘sublimation’: the process postulated by Freud to
account for human activities apparently not connected with sexuality, which have their mainspring however in the power of the sexual instinct. Cultivated people who learn that a lecture
or study will discuss ‘sublimation’ will tend to
think that it is about psychoanalysis ‘applied’ to
cultural phenomena, especially to works of art
such as literature or fine arts. On this view, psychoanalysis considers itself competent to put
forward interpretations on the basis of clinical
experience with psychopathology and the theory
that goes with it. Opinions are divided regarding
this kind of applied psychoanalysis. Some expect
it to yield special insight into the irrational or
even pathological sources of artistic creations.
Others are suspicious of the supposed tendency to
reduce all cultural creation to sexuality and covert
pathology, and annoyed by the analytic zeal with
which a secret sexual symbolism can be uncovered in all sorts of details, such as a raised finger,
a falling Icarus, etc. All these expectations, reservations and rancour, however, are based on misconceptions. The expression ‘applied psychoanalysis’ does not come from Freud. He did make
some references to literary works — Sophocles’
Oedipus plays and Hamlet, among others — but
he recognizes very clearly that these works exhibit their deeper meaning on their own account, so
it is in fact they that teach the psychoanalyst to
hear and to point out what he knows from analytical practice. Concerning artistic creation itself
however, the psychoanalyst has little or nothing
to offer, asserts Freud rightly or wrongly. Howev-
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Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 200
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er, the most prevalent misunderstanding of the
analytic concept of sublimation consists in treating it as an explanatory scheme that does not
belong to the guiding principles of clinical work,
but that gets ‘applied’ to non-clinical data, thus
remaining clinically unverifiable.
Freud’s theory of sublimation is clearly more
a project than a fully elaborated theory. Nevertheless, of one thing we can be certain: the concept
of sublimation is a key concept within Freud’s
clinical and anthropological theoretical system. It
is also clear that the process of sublimation always carries an ethical significance, even when it
does not involve attitudes and actions that would
be called ethical in the strict sense. This is already of importance for a philosophical ethics:
the psychoanalytic theory of sublimation shows
that the ethical is such a fundamental anthropological dimension that it belongs to everything
that is specifically human, i.e., to everything that
is not physiological, biological and neurobiological about the human body.
In order to understand the relation between
ethics and sublimation, one must go back to the
basic postulates of Freud’s theory and practice as
they were constructed on the basis of experience
with the psychotherapy of neuroses and theoretically elaborated with the aim of finding an appropriate therapy. The interpretation and treatment of
psychoses (schizophrenia, paranoia, manic depressive psychosis) involves completely different
clinical and psychological concepts, and so the
problem of sublimation cannot be considered in
the same way there. For this reason, I will leave
this theoretical field outside the present discussion. Very early on, Freud formulated the following basic postulates and maintained them
throughout his entire scientific and therapeutic
activity. A person experiences the insistent demands of the drives from a very young age. A
person can neither escape these demands nor
allow them to remain open and ongoing. They
must be satisfied. However, the unavoidable
necessity of reality — of nature and of society —
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resists such spontaneously desired complete and
direct satisfaction. So one is confronted with a
choice: either seek satisfaction in opposition to
the rules of conduct ordering human dispositions
and activities, which leads to perversion of the
drives, or repress the insistence of the drives and
the representation of satisfaction, which leads to
neurosis, or else partially sublimate the drives by
diverting them towards ‘a higher goal’.
‘Choice’ in this context does not initially
mean a reasoned position taken by a free and
morally responsible will. And yet, the attitude
adopted by the person in conflict, and this would
include a very young and not yet ‘rational’ subject, does not arise according to the causal necessity of the physical world. It is indeed a psychological event. Quite early, before any clear freedom of the will has been established, a decision
process with moral significance regularly takes
place. The term ‘perversion’ clearly also has
ethical implications, but it is not morally correct
to label psychological perversions as expressions
of a morally perverted evil will. With regard to
the theory of sublimation and the observation and
interpretation of neuroses, the problem of moral
responsibility is much more complex than moral
philosophers and theologians often suspect. Insights provided by phenomenology and linguistic
analysis also point to the mixed transitional reality that is the free moral will.
In explanations of sublimation, Freud and the
analysts mainly discuss the sexual drives. And
yet, for Freud himself at least, this includes all of
the drives, precisely because no human drive is a
pre-programmed plan of behaviour like the animal instincts which only vary slightly. Aggression
drives, self-preservation drives and possessive
drives can and should be partially sublimated as
well. The reason why Freud seems to discuss
sublimation of the sexual drive in particular can
only be explained by way of a thorough, critical
study of his problematic conception of the sexual
drive. Suffice it to say here that all drives share
an essential feature that Freud noted and studied
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Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 201
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primarily in the sexual drive: their erotic character. The bodily and psychological experiences of
human activities always awaken a feeling of
pleasure or displeasure that cannot be reduced to
the enjoyment of a functional satisfaction of need.
Something of this psychic uniqueness also exists
in animals, just as they also have a ‘shadow’ of
human knowledge, but drive satisfaction among
humans is so markedly guided by non-functional
enjoyment that such enjoyment can also be
sought for its own sake, even at the expense of a
healthy ordering of needs. Resting on biological
and functional behaviour, then, humans also
develop an entire universe of conduct and creations of a symbolic nature that provide enjoyment of a higher order. Human uniqueness was
already an object of attention and admiration in
Greek philosophy. Of course, enjoyment is a
clearly expressed feature in the case of sexuality,
but it precedes psychologically developed, heterosexually structured sexuality. It can also suffer
serious disturbances. As a proposal for resolving
the antitheses and lacunae in Freud’s texts on
sexuality, and on drives in general, I would suggest considering the libido as the erotic moment
in every drive. By the term libido I do not mean
a generalized psychic energy, as Jung does, nor a
differentiated sexual drive, as Freud does in many
texts, but rather the dynamic directedness towards
a pleasure that is experienced and valued on its
own account, that is first awakened by the activities of life, that is strongly present in physiologically inherited and developing sexuality, and that
can also develop into many characteristically
human activities.
Freud believes that all drives are susceptible to
sublimation, and that all drives ought to be partially sublimated. On the other hand, Freud talks
about all cultural activities as forms of sublimation, or at least as possibilities for sublimation:
art, science, professional life, religion, ethics. The
condition is that they have the quality of pleasure,
not of meaningless but necessary labour. The
nature and degree of pleasure is different, of
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course, for different cultural activities.
Sublimation is a process in which the subject
as a psychological entity directs the drive towards
a goal that is not immediately connected with it,
and that only provides satisfaction if the psychological subject adapts the drive to the goal. The
objectives of sublimation can be very different,
but they all have one feature in common, which
Freud indicates by the comprehensive terms ‘cultural values’ or ‘higher values’. In these expressions, one can recognize the appreciation Freud
the Enlightenment thinker had for the progress of
the ‘spirit’. Likewise, in biblical monotheism he
admired the quality of Vergeistlichung that is
actualized in religion and in humanity. In Freud’s
language, Geist retains all the richness that the
word had come to invoke for German culture.
Geist bears its meaning in opposition to sensuality, immediacy, unrefined pleasure, and also in the
distinction between what belongs to physical
nature and what human beings establish as culture. Consider also that we call the human sciences Geisteswissenschaften in opposition to the
natural sciences. For all of these reasons, Geist
must not simply be thought according to the
ontological dualism of mind and body.
Through sublimation, the subject is able to
meet the demands of natural and social reality,
avoid neurosis-producing repression, and have a
share in ‘spirituality’ by placing a portion of the
drives at the service of spiritual values. From the
sublimation process as we have described it, it
becomes clear that it is in itself an ethical event,
even if the drive is not directed towards behaviour that is explicitly characterized as ethical
by moral philosophy. ‘Ethics’, or the equivalent
term of Latin origin ‘morality’, refers to the system of rules of conduct that one follows (or
should follow) in one’s private and social life. An
action is moral if it can be justified in light of
these rules of conduct recognized by the (ideal)
human community. The ‘higher values’, however,
at whose service sublimation places the drives are
not always actions to which one can apply the
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Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 202
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formal category ‘moral’. Artistic creation and
enjoyment do not fall under the jurisdiction of
moral rules of conduct, unless the designation
‘art’ is merely a cover for a product that is intended to stimulate the drive and direct it towards
an immediate satisfaction, such as the ‘art’ of
pornography for instance. As for religion, it also
contains much more than ethics alone. The tendency to reduce the authentic, legitimate content
of religion to ethics amounts to a reductive denial
of religion. And yet, from a psychoanalytic point
of view, art and religion are both forms of sublimation and, as such, they have a moral significance because they are extremely important domains in the spiritual elevation of human drives.
Labour is also an example of such elevation,
because it gives a spiritual quality to natural facts
and allows for various pleasurable experiences in
its activity, which make life meaningful. Labour
has, or at least can have, in itself a humanizing
and hence a moral value, even before one considers the moral order that labour organizes according to the laws of reason and justice.
Considered in the specificity just described,
ethics is but one of the activities whereby man
realizes the progress of his spirit. In light of the
theory of sublimation, ethics is not a comprehensive theory of values and does not by itself determine the humanity of man. Every human experience and activity has an axiological dimension,
precisely because of the pleasure/displeasure
polarity that determines the drive as a human
dynamic. Ethics as a system of rules for behaviour is even subordinate to a more general
finality: guaranteeing and promoting the spirituality of the human being.
From a psychoanalytic perspective then, ethics
might be defined as the guardian of the axiological dimension of human existence. This dimension has its foundation in the autonomous,
non-utilitarian capacity for pleasure that constitutes one’s anthropological specificity. The axiological dimension develops according to the polarity between natural, sensory immediacy and
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spirituality. The human, as a being of drives, has
the capacity for spirituality, but his humanity is
only effectively established by partially sublimating those drives.
Some practical moral consequences can be
derived from these assertions. Artistic creation
and manifestation, religious cult, the preservation
of the natural landscape, scientific research without any obvious utility — these are all cultural
phenomena that do not belong as such to the
sorts of actions ordered by morality, but they are
‘spiritual’ activities of the greatest importance. If
morality itself is subordinate to what can and
must be brought about by sublimation, then the
responsible social authorities must also see it as
their moral duty to promote those forms of spiritual enjoyment within society. In light of the
theory of sublimation, i.e., the theory of
humanity’s spiritual humanization, one would
have to consider it a moralistic perversion of
morality if the government were to refuse to
support such ‘useless’ activities so long as social
justice is not yet established, or the standard of
welfare can still be raised.
The constitution of the ethical disposition
Moderate eudaemonism and the morality of
obligation — The concept of sublimation is so
essential in psychoanalysis that Freud introduced
and continued to affirm it even though he recognized that it could not be theoretically clarified in
a satisfactory manner. In this respect, the psychoanalytic concept of sublimation is no different
from the key concepts of other sciences, such as
biological evolution, gravitational attraction,
neurobiochemistry, innate linguistic ability, etc.
Psychoanalysis primarily considers the human
individual from the standpoint of its susceptibility
to typically human psychopathology, a pathology
that is not the effect in the psyche of certain
neural disturbances, but one which is itself psychically determined: the neuroses and, by extension, the psychoses. Observation of neuroses has
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Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 203
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led psychoanalysis to affirm two main moral
principles: the ordering of life in accordance with
a eudaemonism which is moderated by the recognition of obligations imposed by the reality of the
body in its natural state, and by a pre-given,
necessary society. Psychoanalysis certainly does
not reject forms of higher morality, as long as
they do not torment the individuals who are unable to bear their weight. Psychoanalysis does not
uphold any moral theory of its own. However, it
does consider the combination of a moderate
eudaemonism and a morality of obligation as
necessary for spiritual health. A person is a being
of drives who also belongs, as a language user, to
the order of the ‘spirit’, the cultural order. As a
being of drives, moving within the polarity between pleasure and displeasure, a person is driven
from within towards the pleasurable satisfaction
of those drives. It is impossible to forsake pleasure. Even when one psychologically or physically destroys oneself, beneath the apparent negation
of pleasure there is still at work a hidden pleasure
of the drive. The idea of masochism has become
part of the popular psychological culture as a
result of the influence of psychoanalysis. In the
strict sense, masochism is a perversion consisting
in the search for explicitly sexual pleasure in
experiences of pain. The psychotic’s self-mutilation, or the psychotic self-imprisonment in a sort
of psychological cage are much more complex
forms of drive satisfaction without any experienced pleasure. Freud correctly characterized this
phenomenon with the paradoxical formula ‘general negation pleasure’ (allgemeine Verneinungslust).
Oriented towards drive satisfaction, a person
cannot attain pleasurable drive satisfaction without being subjected to the demands placed on
him by reality and society. If he were to radically
and anarchically resist this, he would in fact
destroy himself, seeking pleasure not in a psychotic but in a psychopathic manner. He would
relinquish the higher pleasure which his involuntary participation in language and culture makes
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him desire, albeit in an uncertain and not explicitly conscious way.
On the basis of clinical experience, psychoanalysis rejects two moral conceptions. It does
not believe in hedonism and it warns against the
tendency to allow the ‘tyrant Eros’ (Plato, Laws)
to dominate the psyche. On the other hand, psychoanalysis points out the necessity of recognizing the drive’s directedness to pleasure, and it
resists any morality that would equate human
perfection with a control over the drives that
excludes pleasure.
A moderate eudaemonism combined with a
morality of obligation entails a theory which
considers a partial sublimation of the drives to be
possible. Likewise, the principle which states that
every person, as a cultural being, is confronted
with the alternative between either partial sublimation or else neurosis also presupposes the
possibility of sublimation. Freud’s first theoretical
pronouncements about this are quite schematic.
He uses energetic metaphors such as: ‘directed
towards’, ‘diverted to’ or ‘moving to’. After
Freud, psychologists and moral philosophers still
commonly use such terms. ‘Canalization’ is also
a privileged hydraulic metaphor. Freud was never
quite content with this. After some time, he explicitly states that there must be a transformation
of the drive. How could it be otherwise? The
drive and the goal must be correlated in every
activity. As is well known, Freud posed the problem particularly with regard to the sexual drive.
How can it be transformed into artistic pleasure,
into pleasure in seeking the truth, into human or
religious love? Freud recognized that he was
never able to give a completely satisfactory answer to these fundamental questions. I think the
reason for this lies in his debatable conception of
the sexual drive. This has not, however, been
given the attention it deserves.
In his psychoanalytic theory of the constitution
of the ethical disposition, Freud made significant
insights into the process of sublimation. I would
like to clarify these, making reference to Freud,
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Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 204
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but with the freedom to be critical.
Moral feelings as reaction formations — Drives
can be transformed by a spontaneous inner psychic reaction that turns the goal from a morally
negative into a morally positive one. Freud describes this under the heading ‘reaction formations’2 He considers such formations to be ‘indirect forms of sublimation processes’. In this context, ‘indirect’ is to be contrasted with sublimations where the dynamic of the drive shifts from
a sexual goal to a ‘higher’ goal that is somehow
analogous with the immediate sensory goal, for
instance the sublimation of ‘voyeurism’ into the
drive for scientific knowledge.
Freud and many analysts in his wake consider
infantile sexuality to be ‘polymorphously perverse’. At times, Freud warns against the illegitimate tendency to give this designation the meaning of a clinical diagnosis, since infantile sexuality has not yet acquired the fixed form of a true
perversion. In the many places where he speaks
of polymorphously perverse infantile sexuality,
Freud’s concept of the sexual drive is disturbingly ambiguous. Psychoanalysis correctly pointed
out that there is indeed an infantile form of the
sexual drive that develops in phases and that is
progressively structured either perversely or else
homoerotically or heterosexually. Psychoanalysis
also correctly pointed to the fact that infantile
eroticism very early develops feelings that provide sexuality with a moral orientation, a fact that
can easily be verified by attentive observation.
Children who initially like to exhibit themselves
will at a certain moment have feelings of anxiety
or even of shame, feelings that apparently arise
spontaneously in reaction to the pleasure of exhibition. Children who play with their faeces and
proudly display them will, at a later age, have an
affective reaction against this and have feelings of
distaste or even disgust. This kind of reversal is
mysterious. Freud interprets it in light of the
drive dynamic as it works in the child’s situation.
The upsurge of the drive against which the affec2.
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tive reactions arise are not yet of any use to the
child, he says, and they push in the direction of
perversions that will only cause displeasure, given
the individual’s state of development. In any case,
such feelings are a kind of sublimation of the
partial sexual drives: they transform these drives
into moral formations which protect the developing sexuality and direct the individual towards the
cultural community. Freud even believes that a
number of virtues have their source in ‘perverse’
sexual dispositions which have been turned into
virtues. Two critical comments should be made
about this. First of all, at that moment there is not
yet any true perversion. This is only established
when the reactive feelings do not structure sexuality in a normal way, for this is precisely the
psychological and moral function of the reaction
formations. They occur spontaneously, according
to a psychological law regulated by the pleasure
principle. The young subject reacts affectively in
the way that allows him to experience more pleasure than displeasure. This way of reacting is also
determined by the actions and gaze of others,
who can promote either perversion and subsequent neurosis or a normal affective and sexual
development. Precisely because sublimation is an
internal reactive and interactive process, the data
generated by the moral or perverse feelings will
differ according to the culture and situation in
which people find themselves. Nakedness for
instance does not always have the same significance in different cultures, nor will it have for the
child who exhibits himself.
As a clinical science, psychoanalysis has
shown how moral disposition is pre-rationally
formed through humanization of the drive. As a
bodily and psychical power, the drive is the affective capacity that is directed towards enjoyable
satisfaction, spontaneously resisting displeasure.
The phenomenological analyses of Max Scheler
and J. Buytendijk have masterfully demonstrated
the profound and universally human significance
of feelings such as anxiety and shame. Psychoanalysis reaffirms these insights and explains how
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Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 205
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they came about, how their development can be
disturbed, and what the clinical and moral consequences of that might be. Humanization of the
drive, or the sublimatory transformation of the
drive, occurs by overcoming the virtual perversions. If such sublimation does not take place, the
erotic (pleasure-seeking) drive takes the form of
perversion (in exhibitionism and voyeurism, pleasure in obscene practices, pleasure in suffering
pain and in inflicting it).
Whenever a perverse tendency of the drive is
established early and yet, for one reason or another, leads unconsciously to displeasure, a second
spontaneous reaction most often occurs in the
subject, partly under the influence of the surroundings: the formation of neurosis by the repression of the perverse drive representations. A
more thorough analysis can be made of these
phenomena. I will return to them after a discussion of social feelings.
The social feelings and virtues — Clinical
observation of paranoid disturbances, such as
persecution complexes and pathological jealousy,
led Freud to explain the formation of social feelings as a sublimation of the erotic drive, particularly the homophile drive. This claim annoyed
many people who do not see the psychoanalytic
arguments in the context of concrete clinical
studies. In order to understand Freud’s claim as
possibly meaningful, one must reflect on clinical
observations. Intense friendship and deep affective relations with a father figure can change into
a persecution complex. How can this be understood? And what does it mean that in the case of
pathological jealousy where a man suspects his
wife of deceiving him, all the man’s attention is
apparently directed towards his alleged rival,
much more than towards his wife? And why can
a narcissistic wound end up as a paranoid delusion because of a professional rival’s success.
These clinical facts reveal, according to Freud,
that the affective relations in social life between
an individual and his fellow man have something
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to do with the erotic drive.
The factors leading to the creation of such
paranoic phenomena are clearly psychological;
the illness is therefore a psychological occurrence. The content of the illness has a meaning; as a result, paranoia must be interpreted
psychologically even when medical therapy is
recommended. It is undoubtedly a question of
strong affective links, thus pertaining to the
drives, both in the lead-up to and in the meaning
of the pathology. Something takes place in the
drive relationship that is outside normal consciousness. It is an occurrence that involves deep
psychic archaic layers of the drive and of the
feeling, layers that always remain operational in
adults. Because it is the drive relationship and the
feelings produced by it that are at stake, one must
conclude that the erotic drive is at work in this
pathology, the drive in its aspect concerned with
the sexually equal, the similar: the homoerotic
drive. Freud, who made no distinction between
eroticism and sexuality, places ‘homosexuality’ at
the basis of paranoia.
Clinical observation of the factors leading to
paranoia and the analysis of the content of paranoid delusions do not exhibit homosexuality, but
rather hate which replaces a previous friendship,
affective attachment to a father figure or professional feelings of collegiality. Paranoia, then,
incites us to think that drive relations must also
lie at the foundation of normal, humanly valuable
feelings of friendship. Freud then concludes,
correctly in my opinion, that social feelings arise
from a sublimation of the homoerotic, ‘homosexual’ drive relations. It is precisely because
these drive relations are transformed through
sublimation that, in cases of a narcissistic wound,
sublimation can also be reduced and feelings of
love can switch to feelings of hate. The pathological madness of such hate betrays that it is the
reversal of a love based on the drive. All love
can change into hate, precisely because all love
arises from the sublimation of the erotic drive.
Regarding the distinction that I make, contrary
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Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 206
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to Freud, between homoeroticism and homosexuality, I would repeat the claim that I already
made concerning the perversions. In my view,
homosexuality is the result of a further development of the homoerotic drive that does not go on
to sublimation. The pressure of a physiologically
and relationally determined sexuality then gets
polarized onto the same sex.
Other clinical observations confirm the psychoanalysis of the formation of social feelings. It
is recognized, for example, that teachers are
sometimes guilty of ‘paedophilia’. This is a
dreadful word for the perversion of pederasty.
Facts show that a sort of homoerotic drive relation underlies pedagogical love, which is its sublimation. Yet all sublimation is fragile and requires vigilance. Pedagogical sublimation is undoubtedly the beneficial psychological foundation
of a pedagogy carried out with humane love. It
was largely this kind of homoeroticism that the
Athenians developed and appreciated. They took
greater liberties than our culture tolerates, also
because they valued women to a lesser degree.
Yet they also warned against addiction to paedophilia. Pedagogical love will always involve the
risk of paedophilia and pederasty, but pedagogical
paedophilia has nothing in common with the
sadistic perversions recently mentioned in the
criminal reports.
There also exist social feelings that are apparently not the direct sublimation of a homoerotic
attachment, but they concern those others with
whom one is not affectively related by friendship,
professional familiarity or solidarity. I am thinking here of the altruistic concern for those who
suffer physically or mentally, philanthropic initiatives, or even passionate animal rights activists.
According to Freud and many analysts following
him, these are social feelings that arise from a
reversal of aggressive drive feelings. Most of the
virtues, on Freud’s view, are produced as reactive
formations, which means by an ‘indirect sublimation’ as I described in the previous section. The
well known psychiatrist and analyst L. Szondi
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introduced the term ‘Cain complex’ in this connection, by analogy with Freud’s Oedipus complex. In a humanized person, this murderous
aggression turns into sympathy, doing good,
redressing wrongs, sensitivity to ‘the sacred’.
Szondi also calls this transformation ‘sublimation’.
Sublimation and moral attitudes
The ego ideal — I mentioned in the foregoing
that sublimation is a psychological process regulated by the polarity of pleasure and displeasure,
and one which precedes all reasoned attitudes.
And yet, sublimation is not some automatism that
befalls the psyche and which the psyche would
passively undergo. The psyche is what completes
sublimation. In this sense, the psyche is a subject
that one should consider as a pre-ego.
I have stated that the psyche carries out the
process of sublimation under the influence of the
human environment. This now has to be clarified.
I will follow Freud’s insights to the extent that I
think they require explanation, without repeating
an exegesis and discussion of his research on this
point.
In an extremely important study inspired by
new clinical problems, Freud introduced the term
‘narcissism’ to indicate a phase in the normal
constitution of the ego. Narcissism is the erotic
(in the sense defined above) movement of the
psyche reflecting back upon itself, such that the
ego is constituted through this reflexive libidinal
act as the centre of feeling, desire and also linguistic consciousness. Philosophers can best understand this by drawing a comparison with the
reflexive constitution of self-consciousness as
described by Descartes. Through this libidinal
reflexivity, the ego, in its very constitution, institutes a distance from itself. It is whatever it can
become. With this inner openness, the ego takes
up a reference to the desired existential possibilities that it sees before it. In the way that it is
treated and cared for, in the feelings that it hears
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Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 207
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expressed between its father and mother, in the
cleanliness and regularity of bodily hygiene, in
the rhythm of language and song, the young child
already perceives what is designated by the abstract term ‘cultural values’. The child takes up
these values, internalizes them, at least if they are
perceived as sufficient sources of pleasure. In this
way, the ego forms its ego ideal as an inner form
of existence towards which the ego is directed, a
beloved prospective image of everything the ego
wants to experience, to do and to be.
The psychic ego that completes the sublimation process directs itself to the ideal that it bears
within itself as a structural component. This event
can be concretely analyzed for every case of
sublimation. Take the case of the formation of
shame (in the sense of timidity, not social feelings of guilt). The amoral, but not yet perverse
exhibitionistic pleasure shown by a normal
child’s body characterized by drives encounters,
at a certain moment in its psychical development,
the gaze of the other which acquires a new meaning. The young child realizes that the other is
looking with a sexually inviting gaze, or with a
gaze that is neutral, or with a dismissive gaze. Of
course, these relation forms are determined by
cultural tradition and by the often unconscious
psychological disposition of the others. In any
case, the initial libidinal expression loses the
innocence of a natural, not yet human, and not
yet morally qualified behaviour. At that moment,
the child becomes a self-constituting ego and can
take up the ideal of feeling and behaviour that its
cultural environment offers by the forms of interaction just mentioned. In its reactions, the young
ego then directs itself at that inner ideal which
announces a new, and more ‘spiritual’ form of
pleasure. Shame as an experience of the intact
inner self, and as an affective reaction to the
other, is in fact a detour through the ego ideal, a
sublimation of the ‘partial’ erotic drive that provokes exhibitionistic pleasure. Later, the play
involved in love can provide that sublimated
pleasure with the deep symbolic meaning of
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appreciation, generosity and responsiveness.
The ego ideal is also an important factor in
the sublimation of homoeroticism in friendship.
We need only think of what Aristotle already
claimed, that friendship implies a community of
interests and a relation of giving and receiving.
What psychoanalysis teaches on the basis of the
clinical observations already mentioned is that
this value relationship rests on a psychologically
archaic sublimation which is guided and attracted
by a pre-conscious, communal ego ideal.
Moral dispositions and attitudes — Sublimation
is a pre-moral psychological process, with an
evidently moral meaning, that makes up the psychological foundation of the explicitly moral
dispositions and attitudes. Every form of sublimation already has a moral significance, and every
sublimation contributes to the formation of a
disposition that promotes moral behaviour, since
every sublimation implies a renunciation of the
immediate, bodily satisfaction of the drives. And
all sublimation contributes to the development of
the sexual drive in such a way that it does not get
imprisoned in an addictive perversion. However,
certain forms of sublimation, having to do with
erotic intersubjective relations, have a more pronounced moral significance: friendship, feelings
of shame and aversion, common ideals, philanthropy, etc.
Psychoanalysis teaches us how deeply rooted
our moral dispositions and attitudes are in psychic structures and processes. Describing moral
judgement as the rational ability to resolve dilemmas according to rational criteria, as Kohlberg
has done, testifies to a narrow anthropological
viewpoint. The intimate unity between archaic
psychic formations and moral competence also
results in the consequence that human freedom
must be considered as more limited than moralists
tend to think. On the other hand, it is simply
wrong to deny freedom, as Freud did in certain of
his texts that reject an impoverished concept of
freedom. A simple dismissal of freedom would
2.
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Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 208
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imply a mistaken perception of the dynamic
tension that psychoanalysis reveals between the
ego and the ego ideal. It is precisely sublimation
that makes the moral disposition and decisions
possible. Perversion and neurosis are the two
forms where sublimation did not take place, or
did not sufficiently succeed. These two pathologies hinder the formation of the moral disposition
and reduce, often extensively, the freedom to
assume moral attitudes. In such cases, one sees
that seemingly moral attitudes are actually, in to
Freud’s striking expression, Verwerfungsurteile:
judgements ruled by affective rejection. On
Freud’s view, the true moral attitude, on the
contrary, is a Urteilsverwerfung, a judgement of
rejection.
The negative form of this expression, ‘judgement of rejection’, irritates many of our contemporaries. They tend to resist any morality that
speaks in terms of commands, let alone prohibitions. They would prefer the more noble term,
‘moral values’. But our irritated contemporaries
seem to forget that moral attitudes are always
involved in a sublimation which already contains
the negative moment of a renunciation of immediate pleasure, a detour of the drive’s tendency, a
spiritualization. Even our cherished decalogue
testifies to this insight into the anthropological
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constitution of ethics: ‘thou shalt not kill’ is the
demand placed on humanity to change its aggressive drives into an attachment that can institute society, and into respect for one’s fellow
men. The absolute nature of the negative prohibition moves in the direction of a universal respect
for all human life.
The psychoanalytic theory of sublimation can
perhaps assist philosophical ethics in understanding its concept of ‘values’. ‘Values’ is a term
borrowed from economic thought. Transferred to
ethics, it is an ambiguous term. What is the ontological status of a moral value? It does not exist
as a factual given, nor can it be thought of as
being simply attainable. In this sense it is transcendent, but not as being is. Is this not necessarily so, precisely because a moral attitude always
gives expression to what humans, as libidinal
beings, consider to be worthy within a human
manner of being and acting, and because what
they consider to be worthy is always what corresponds to their never realized ego ideal? Moral
values move within the dynamic field of sublimation, governed by two principles that are indispensable if one is to have a true sublimation: the
principle of moderate eudaemonism and the principle of a morality of obligation.
Notes
1. For such background, I would take this opportunity to refer to my La psychanalyse à l’épreuve de la sublimation
(Paris, Cerf, 1997). I think that the statements I make in the present article have been sufficiently supported in that
book.
2. For the references to Freud’s texts, as well as the critical discussion of them, see my book La psychanalyse à
l’épreuve de la sublimation, p. 218ff.
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Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 209