Abstract

My speech is intended to insert the question of sublimation in a larger consideration of Freud’s thought, based on the model of libidinal repression and its cultural background. In this sense, I will not enter immediately in a detailed discussion of sublimation’s features, but I prefer to criticize it starting by a recognition of the philosophical paradigm that supports it, and then I will move to the analysis of the weak points of sublimation theory. This does not mean that I want to deny the refinement of taste and the creation of a sense of delicacy that are determined by art practice in the civilization of complex societies. I just want to criticize Freud’s intention of keeping them inside the dynamics of intrapsychic processes, in spite of considering them as part of larger interpersonal and social processes. Therefore, if we reconsider sublimation from a social point of view, the role of civilization would be reversed: it would play no longer the part of the policeman who represses desires, but the role of a positive factor in the development of imagination.