Sublimation (psychology)
In psychology, sublimation is a mature type of defense mechanism where socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are unconsciously transformed into socially acceptable actions or behavior, possibly resulting in a long-term conversion of the initial impulse.
Sigmund Freud believed that sublimation was a sign of maturity (indeed, of civilization), allowing people to function normally in culturally acceptable ways. He defined sublimation as the process of deflecting sexual instincts into acts of higher social valuation, being "an especially conspicuous feature of cultural development; it is what makes it possible for higher psychical activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such an important part in civilised life". Wade and Tavris present a similar view, stating that sublimation is when displacement "serves a higher cultural or socially useful purpose, as in the creation of art or inventions".
Origin
The first thinker to use the word in a psychological sense was the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In the opening section of Human, All Too Human entitled ‘Of first and last things’, Nietzsche wrote:
