The Letter, Issue 69, pages 29-38
Sublimation and Creativity
Anne Woodbyrne
The sublimation of sexual instinct is a concept that traverses psyche, civilisation, love, religion, work, art and audience. The aim here is to trace Freud’s development of the concept, its role in civilisation and its psychical origins in man, one man in particular, Leonardo da Vinci, whom, according to Freud, had a great capacity for sublimation.
Keywords: Freud; Leonardo da Vinci; sublimation; sexual instinct; latency period: psychoanalysis.
It was through his work with hysterics that Freud first discovered the role sexual impulses play in the causation of neuroses. But his early writings also show his awareness that neurosis wasn’t the only path open to an unwanted drive. Freud found that these same sexual impulses could contribute to the highest cultural, artistic and social creations. He referred to this process as sublimation. This idea, that the sexual impulse can be redirected toward other aims and activities that are finer and higher, first appeared in Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria while referencing the child’s perversions and sexual polymorphism;
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