If sexual craving can be repressed, why
do some people become pathological and
others can instead successfully channel
their desire into great works of art and
literature? If everything is about sexual
craving then how do people get out of
bed, and enjoy vigorous and intense
hobbies and interests? For Freud this is
explained as a transfer of energy from
sex to ambition. He called this mechanism
sublimation.
One of the more famous but abstract concepts that Freud explained was that
of sublimation. This is the ability to take the sexual libido, or craving, and to
direct it towards socially acceptable projects and goals.
Freud briefly outlines this process, which begins with childhood researches
on how sex works and is then interrupted by "a wave of energetic sexual repression"
from family and culture. There are three avenues for this energy to move, usually
to intellectual research. If the repression doesn't lead to intellectual
endeavours then it can lead to...
In the second type of sublimation it involves...
In the third form of sublimation...
The key to sublimation to go in this direction is having a strong enough
repression from either disgust or shame
that the projects of research and
understanding replace sexual release. For example, if I research something that I
don't understand about a Freudian concept, it can be a setup that requires
a payoff, like the stress of dating and then sex. Then when a profound
intellectual understanding is achieved it's like an intellectual orgasm. To see
micro versions of sublimations in your life you have to meditate and see the
tension in your wishes/desires and then notice the release when satisfying them.
As described in prior videos, libido is like a craving. You have a craving that
arises with the daydream or wish. These are often culturally provided for us, and
then a tension or frustration arises related to the lack of satisfaction
because there is a distance between ourselves and the object of desire. It
motivates action to close the gap, and then there's relief when the desire is
achieved. Cravings for food and sex are felt in the body, but there is emotional
craving that can go anywhere. In some ways the tension and release can involve
things like cleaning a room and getting satisfaction from it. Buying interesting
things exercising, enjoying non-sexual pleasures, creating art, and educating
oneself. All these goals and achievements can be thought of as unconscious ways to
make oneself more interesting, economically effective, sexually
attractive and desirable, leading right back to sex. The more one is
concentrating and enjoying the non-sexual activity, so that sex is not on
one's mind, the more sublimated the result. The more pleasurable and
satisfying the achievement is, the more successful it replaces
sexuality as an aim. Yet unconsciously, these achievements make us more likely
to attract sexual partners, leading ultimately to the unconscious goal of
finding a mate.Freud controversially psychoanalyzed Leonardo Da Vinci from
his notebooks and found evidence of artistic sublimation.
Leonardo at one point in his notebooks said...
For Freud, Leonardo's intense curiosity was a complete sublimation of
his sexual drive leading to no need for sexual relationships with others.
Freud saw a lot in Leonardo's paintings, maybe too much for most modern
critics who felt that Freud both over-analyzed and under-analyzed him. When you
have never met the subject you are more likely to miss the mark. But like a "bull in a China shop"
Freud found clues to homosexuality
related to an undying allegiance to his mother. The Mona Lisa Smile in the famous
painting and the The Virgin and Child with St. Anne, represent an ideal memory of
his mother. The smile, being a symbol of happiness that
Leonardo could recreate in many paintings, was a way to preserve that
memory. This is a more direct way of enjoying alternative pleasures, but there
is also a vicarious way of sublimating.
Freud and Breuer emphasized the value of releasing emotions related to
unconscious memories in, Studies in Hysteria.
A famous precursor to their method is that of an audience watching performing
arts as Aristotle explained, and that the purpose...
With the ability to imitate and identify, the audience begins developing cravings related to the actions of the
characters on a stage or in a book. We rate which characters we think act and
choose like we do, or especially how we want to be, and emotionally invest in them.
As the characters move through the plot our emotions move with them, and
their emotional releases can be ours as well. All of us have the ability to
imitate and it happens naturally like we see in watching movies or plays. It can
allow us to vicariously live another character's life. Freud says...
Yet this vicarious pleasure has a safety net.
Like most drama teachers and screenwriters will tell their students, there has to be conflict in order to keep the film
or play interesting. That tension or frustration followed by a payoff. A lot
of pleasure is in fact a reduction of stress. Stress has to be created first,
with a difficult problem or obstacle that increases painful mental processing,
and then it must be alleviated to get the proper effect. Mundane areas of life
do not have enough drama or conflict...
Along with external conflict, there is also internal conflict that characters experience.
Social institutions forbid the acting on every impulse moving the external struggle to an internal struggle.
Here we can see identification as a form of imitation. If the spectator has
internal struggles like that of the characters in the play, the potential for
emotional release increases. It's like when audience members criticize a movie
because they don't identify with a character. It means that they would not
do what the hero does. Yet the more characters behave congruently, like what
the audience wants in their fantasies, the more success the artwork will
receive.
For Freud, he connects fantasies with play, by how the fantasies can be
reenacted with real objects...
Yet the sense that play has an element of safety is that it allows us to go into dangerous scenarios that
would be too frightening if they were real. We can think about imaginary
problems and think about solutions and gain pleasure from the tension and
release. These rules are very apparent for creative writers. They have to
contrive just those kind of scenarios that setup tension and provide release so
that the audience will actually like their work, but reality doesn't always
provide that. This is why many artworks can appear like an escape from reality.
The demarcation between childhood play and being a grown up doesn't really exist for Freud.
It just moves into things like sports, or stays in the imagination as daydreaming.
Freud elegantly describes how daydreams are generated.
wish that runs through them. For Freud, he sees daydreams as simply a continuation
of dreams we have at night.
Play has an important role for children in that it allows them to think about the adult
world and how they can imitate characteristics of their adult role
models, and this can be seen with wild animals and their play.
The tension that people feel seems to be a requirement for future happiness, and we often create this drama, challenge,
or conflict. When we are satisfied there is less motivation to take action in the world.
Freud says...
In a movie or play, fantasy can be quite different from
reality and provide entertainment, but if daydreams mimic unreality and are
projected onto the world, a potential for anxiety is created.
Deeper than identifying with the hero's struggle, is to
finally see the struggle within, and the temptation to make the art
autobiographic or self-indulgent.
When an artist's work resonates with a large section of a culture, it
telegraphs the culture's wishes.
To avoid embarrassment or shame for these
unrealistic dreams, the audience is enabled by the writer...
In a suspense of disbelief,
the audience can follow along with the plot, however fantastical, and if they identify
with the writer and their intent with
the hero they can enjoy what the author
with the writer and their intent with the hero, they can enjoy what the author
creates, even if those ideas in the cold light of day would repel them.
