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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- _______________________________________________________________________________________ Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 200 ___________________________________ 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 — ___________________________________ 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 _______________________________________________________________________________________ Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 201 ___________________________________ 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 ___________________________________ 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 _______________________________________________________________________________________ Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 202 ___________________________________ 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 ___________________________________ 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 1. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 203 ___________________________________ 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 ___________________________________ 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, _______________________________________________________________________________________ Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 204 ___________________________________ 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. ___________________________________ 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 _______________________________________________________________________________________ Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 205 ___________________________________ 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 3. ___________________________________ 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 _______________________________________________________________________________________ Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 206 ___________________________________ 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 ___________________________________ 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 1. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 207 ___________________________________ 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 ___________________________________ 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. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 208 ___________________________________ 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 ___________________________________ 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. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Ethical Perspectives 5 (1998)2, p. 209