Freud Sublimation Essay

Freudian psychology has been one of the most dominant forces in psychology for a century, despite some major caveats Freud has remained relevant. An essential component of his therapy and conceptual understanding of humanity are the defence mechanisms, none more impactful than his theory of sublimation. This essay will attempt to discuss three main points. Firstly, sublimation is an underlying concept of psychoanalysis which evolved throughout Freud’s career; an important distinction must be made between his definitions during the first and second topography, and from here there has been controversy which will be discussed later along with a more comprehensive description of the concept and the process of sublimation. A simple definition is provided by Freud (1910), where sublimation is operationalised as the displacement of the sexual drive’s aim onto another, not necessarily sexual, action. Usually this displacement is beneficial to society, and is viewed by Freud as an important process which allows the individual …show more content…
The manner in which Freud operationalised this concept ran under the premise that there was an innate divergence in the ego into two compartments; the object-libido and the self-libido. The sublimation provides the energy used to facilitate development and interaction with society (Loewald, 1988). However, this suggestion discounts the unity provided by the narcissistic libido. It is more likely that the self-directed libido and the object-libido begin as the same system, with narcissistic identification playing a major role in what is chosen as the object for affection (Hall, 1954). The ability of the ego to sublimate is thus based on a combined action of the object and self libido; they provide the innate sublimation of the ‘primal’- genetically produced- repression (Loewald,