sublimation may be the most powerful defense mechanism in human psychology, becoming increasingly important in society, and becoming the basis for the development of social interests, culture, science and civilization itself. Sublimation, as described by Freud, is a process of change, initially destructive love and death instincts more socially accepting or socially beneficial behaviors and occupations to take place in the process of replacing the original sexual drive, its framework remains rather vague because there are these types of activities that convey the neutral meaning better than socially favorable. At the same time, narcissism is typical of normal human psychological development. The process of sublimation may lead to the increase in creative sublimation activities caused by positive and negative consequences in society, but lead to a failure in human interaction in the social environment.
Sublimation is one of the key points of Freud's development of human nature theory. Freud was one of the most outstanding psychologists of the 20th century and the father of psychoanalysis . Sublimation is one of the key defense mechanisms of human psychology, saving it from its destructive instincts and helping humans integrate into a society that conforms to its rules and moral behavior limitations. As the most constructive and advantageous way to redirect the destructive love-hate instinct, sublimation is considered by Freud as the source of civilization development, as well as art, science and many other fields.
is a component of a complex theory that contains the perspectives of human psychological organization and the way humans interact with society. Sublimation, like other defense mechanisms such as forgetting, repression, and projection, is regarded as a constraint on human destructive impulses. At the same time, sublimation is more of a consequence process due to the necessity of taming human inherent instincts. Start with a brief overview of Freud's theory of personality and the conceptual levels therein.
Three components of human psychology Freud's psychological model developed is a ternary structure that works together by the id, the self and the superego to create a complex set of human behaviors. These three components are successively based on the concept of the psychological level of human psychology. These levels are the unconscious, the consciousness and the preconscious have some relationship with each other, forming the basis of the three components of the spirit.
Subconscious is a level that has existed since human birth, and contains a combination of innate feelings, drives, impulses and thoughts that exist outside of consciousness, which are mainly unacceptable or unpleasant. In other words, the unconscious is born with human beings, it is the only level of thinking at the beginning of human life and continues to have an impact on his/her behavior throughout life, even if we may not be aware of this hidden effect. The level of consciousness contains all the psychological and cognitive processes that individuals realize and is formed in the process of human psychological development and interaction with the outside world. The preconscious level constitutes the ordinary memory level.
Although people may be consciously unaware of the information stored in their memory, it can be extracted at any time if needed. In other words, these data are stored unconsciously in the human brain, but can be transferred to the level of consciousness when necessary. Therefore, preconscious acts as an intermediate link between the subconscious and consciousness. These three basic levels of human thinking are reflected in the three main components of human psychology mentioned above.
This unconsciousness is represented by the Idiot in Freud's model. This is considered a reservoir of unconscious drive, irrational psychological responses, and natural biological impulses. This is a spiritual example guided by its own laws, forming the basis of personality activities. At the same time, the id is the only source of spiritual energy and only obeys the principle of happiness. The Idiot is the reservoir of basic human instincts that need to be met immediately, including sexual desire, love and death instincts, etc. Naturally, under the guidance of these instincts, the Idiot does not consider the moral norms in others and society.
is obvious that the pure pleasure of completely ignoring the conditions of reality and the reckless drive of satisfying self-desire will inevitably destroy humanity. The superego is the counterpart of the id, a peculiar reflection of the social world in human psychology, and a reservoir of social rules, social behavior and interaction norms, moral taboos and religious orientations. The superego is represented by behavioral and moral standards obtained from parents and society during psychological development.
The three main functions of the superego are consciousness, introspection and the formation of ideals. At the same time, the superego is another bipolar fragment of the spirit, fighting unacceptable efforts of the id, making personal behavior consistent with ideal moral and behavioral principles. Since the id is purely selfish, the superego is socially oriented, and they are in a permanent state of conflict reflecting the conflict between individuals and society. The balance force in this model is represented by the self, which enables the first two components to exist objectively and ensures that the individual's drive is satisfied in an external social environment.
self is implemented by the self and the superego, aiming to combine the two to ensure the necessary connection to the social environment. Another important function is psychological defense mechanism , which can deceive the overly strict superego and satisfy the desires of the id without causing guilt. Defense mechanisms help individuals suppress basic drivers, place them in a socially accepted framework, or redirect them to weaken the intensity of conflict.
Repression, as a defense mechanism, completely suppresses the unacceptable desires of society, but in order to make up for the shortcomings of reality, individuals often establish fantasy life in their minds. But excessive fantasy can be quite harmful because its content becomes a symptom of disorder. , total repression of sexual desire and excessive use of self-effects may lead to neurosis and other diseases. Desire impulses are quite flexible and can replace or change their objects with each other, and they can switch to more easily accessible objects.
As the energy of desire is attached to all aspects described by the word love, including sexual relations, love for parents, children, overall benevolence, and the driving force of narcissism, i.e. self-love. If sexual desire is not satisfied, either suppress it or sublimate it into another target, which is genetically related to the former but does not have sexual characteristics. In fact, sublimation, contrary to repression, is an important mechanism for maintaining individual psychological balance when sexual impulses and emotional energy are expressed in limited amounts. The premise of sublimation is the sexually driven redirection that shifts human existence and activities from the initial goals, such as reproduction and happiness, to asexual and socially acceptable goals. The premise of this process is to disperse the initial sexual goals and focus sexual desire on higher types of activities that convey social benefits. After being sublimated, sexual energy finds another outlet, beyond the boundaries of physical pleasure for social and cultural purposes. Due to this psychological operation, the basic sexual instinct partially translates into higher goals and seeks exports in other non-sexual areas of human life.
Social goals are given a more important position than egoism and sexual goals. The social goal of replacing sexual impulses in human mind is psychologically close to the latter, but there is no conveying subtext. Science, work and art are often the most common exports of basic instincts, so sublimation has considerable significance for culture and progress.
redirects a strong sexual impulse, and people should perform better at work, increase productivity, invest more time and energy in research and creative activities, and find types of leisure activities that are beneficial or acceptable to society. Furthermore, transforming the otherwise destructive instincts of love and death into creativity is believed to suppress aggressiveness and enhance individual mental powers.
People tend to participate in creativity and professional activities rather than follow their love instincts. Sublimation absorbs only a part of the sexual energy converted into non-sexual energy. The degree of development of sublimation ability in everyone is different.
Although the concept of sublimation is very popular among scholars and psychology practitioners, the concept of sublimation has been expanded and debated over time. The concept developed by Freud does not specify the difference between suppressing driving forces and sublimation on the road to the goal.
In this case, we can assume that the difference between simply suppressing unacceptable driving forces in the human mind is rather vague and suppressing them by redirecting to other objects or targets. If we deal with non-aggressive or non-sexual behavior patterns, there is no need to mention the concept of sublimation. The concept of sublimation of
has gone through a long process of development and has made great progress since Freud proposed in the early 20th century.As famous scholars have described, sublimation seems to be a rather simple redirection process by the ego, as an instance of conscious control between the ego and the superego, in which the ego replaces the destructive sexual energy of the ego with the higher goals that society evaluates. The concept of
is much more complex, and the sublimation itself is likely to be unconscious rather than conscious. The behavioral patterns that lead to anxiety or behavioral patterns that violate more socially acceptable activities are replaced by the latter. Freud's concept of sublimation is not clear enough for the study of this branch of psychology. Whether the concept of sublimation includes a complex of the entire spiritual activity or only certain forms of intellectual creative work is unclear.
Another vague aspect is the main feature of sublimation activities. If the purpose of sublimation is to replace intolerable behavior with the type of activity accepted by civilized society as normal, it is unclear whether the products of sublimation must be highly or positively evaluated by society in all cases. Some types of activities may be evaluated as neutral rather than positive, and certain types of adaptive activities, such as leisure or work, are unlikely to be considered positive in our society, and they are more likely to be considered neutral.
Narcissism and repression in society are sublimation that leads to the normal development of personality. At the same time, repression develops into a pathological characteristic. In sublimational development, an important feature of personality is narcissism, which redirects people's sexual desires in themselves and makes people self-satisfied and self-satisfied. Narcissistic tendencies have been developing in society and are reinforced by the sexual moral norms established therein.
This trend is particularly evident in women, as it is a reward for the fact that women are much more restricted in the freedom of the object of selective impulse to achieve the object, namely, the fact that the rights of women and men are unequal. In fact, narcissism is a product of sublimation, while repression is a defense mechanism that often leads to abnormal tendencies in psychological development.
Because narcissism has been strengthened in society, while repression is mainly ignored. Since narcissism is closely related to sublimation activities, it is likely that there is a favorable trend for the further development of an activity that is conducive to the society. In addition, abandoning the tendency to repress, individuals may reduce the risk of neurological disorder development.
Excessive focus on the manifestations of narcissism may lead to difficulties in social communication and interaction, as people may sublimate more and more sexual impulses into self-satisfaction, and may even be close to retreating to the inherent egoism of humanity.
