Narziss

I’d like to discuss the excellent essay by Ken Gemes titled, “Freud and Nietzsche on Sublimation”.  This essay attempts to describe what “sublimation” means to Nietzsche and how he offers a criteria for the term that is purely psychological, self-contained, and free from cultural norms.  The essay essentially uses Nietzsche to clarify a term in Freud, to define “sublimation” on a purely psychological basis.  I will try to give a summary of the main ideas, interspersed with a few of my own extensions.

According to Freud, when a repression occurs, two components of a drive are repressed: the ideational component and the energetic component.

The first component is the ideational component, which includes the aim and object of the drive.  For example, a sex drive may produce an image of a naked person in your mind; it may also make you direct your attention toward glancing at human bodies in a particular way.  When the ideational component is repressed, no such images appear in your mind, and your attention is no longer guided in this way.  

The second component that is repressed is the energetic component or the force that pushes you to pursue the aim of the drive.  For example, in fully repressing the sex drive, not only are sexual images (the ideational component) kept from rising to consciousness, but also, the force or energy of the sex drive (the energetic component) is kept from expressing itself.  

In repression, both the ideational component and the energetic component are inhibited:

Sublimation is the goal of psychoanalysis; hence, getting this concept straight is vital to understanding psychoanalysis.  The term is important because “sublimation” is the means by which an individual is cured of his neurosis.  

A neurosis is when the energetic component of a repressed drive breaks-out and is channeled toward neurotic behavior.  I will explain neurosis with an example describing a man’s transition from repression to neurosis.  Let’s say a man’s sex drive is fully repressed: both the ideational and energetic components have been repressed (as noted by the red x’s in the above diagram).  However, afterward, the force of the pent-up energetic component builds-and-builds, and it eventually breaks, is released, and forces the man the act in an erratic manner.  While the ideational component is still repressed, the energetic component is no longer repressed; however, the energy has been directed toward neurotic behavior (e.g. the man begins to act in an unhealthy obsessive compulsive manner).  While the original direction of the sex drive’s energetic component would have been toward sex, the neurotically redirected energy compels the man to think and act in a way indicative of pathological symptoms.  

In neurosis, the ideational component remains repressed while the energetic component finds expression in pathological symptoms:

On the other hand, sublimation works in a similar manner but with a healthier end (the ideational component remains x’ed out while the energetic component is allowed expression).  

Before an individual has a drive sublimated, the person is either in a state of repression in which the energetic component must be carefully released and directed toward a healthy end or the man is in a state of neurosis in which the energetic component must be harnessed and redirected from an unhealthy to a healthy end.  

In the case of a sublimated repression, for example, the energetic component could have been pent-up, at which point the man finds a way to release the energy and channel it toward, let’s say, art.  In other words, to sublimate the repressed drive toward art.

In the case of a sublimated neurosis, for example, the energetic component, which had been e.g. directed toward obsessive compulsive behavior, is redirected toward producing art.  The drive’s energy is redirected away from neurotic behavior and toward art.

In sublimation, the ideational component remains repressed while the energetic component finds expression in acceptable behavior:

As an interesting aside, let me mention that there are two ways in which sublimation can be attained.  The first is attained without the direct involvement of consciousness, and the second is attained with the direct involvement of consciousness.

The first is non-conscious, in which the man successfully releases or redirects the energetic component almost accidentally, without becoming conscious of the repressed ideational component.  For example, the man never realizes that he had been keeping a sexual fantasy from becoming conscious, but nevertheless, he releases or redirects the energetic component toward a healthier end.  

The second means for attaining sublimation is conscious, and this is the means by which psychoanalysis operates.  Psychoanalysis makes the patient aware of his repressed ideational component.  For example, the man realizes that he had been keeping images of chained-up, naked women from rising to consciousness.  The psychoanalyst has made him aware of the ideational component so that the man can realize that the accompanying energetic component needs to be released (if repressed) or redirected (if currently directed toward neurotic behavior).  Once the patient has sublimated the energetic component, the original ideational component will fade away.  

Let me add that we can call the first case, “unintentional sublimation,” since the energetic component was sublimated without the person becoming aware of the repressed ideational component, and we can call the second case, “intentional sublimation,” since the person becomes aware of the ideational component and actively strives to find a healthy vent for the energetic component.  

The structural similarity that we find is that In both sublimation and in neurosis the ideational component remains repressed while the energetic component finds expression in alternative thoughts and behavior:

The crux of Gemes’s article is the following problem: how can we differentiate sublimations from neurosis?

As we can see, both sublimations and neurosis involve similar structures.  In both cases, the original ideational component remains repressed while the original energetic component has been redirected toward some other end.  

In order to distinguish between the two, Freud reluctantly offers one possibility: we can distinguish a sublimation from a neurosis by using cultural norms.  For example, a sex drive that has been redirected toward artistic activity is considered sublimated if our culture puts a positive valence on artistic activity; a sex drive that has been redirected toward obsessive compulsive behavior is considered neurotic if our culture puts a negative valence on such behavior.  

However, this attempt to differentiate between the two on the basis of cultural norms is ineffective since it produces another problem: if the cultural norms change, then what has been previously considered a sublimation could be considered a neurosis, and what has been previously considered a neurosis could be considered a sublimation.  

In our example, if our culture begins to depreciate artistic activity, then the drive redirected toward such activity would be considered neurotic.  If our culture begins to appreciate obsessive compulsive behavior, then the drive redirected toward such behavior would be considered sublimated.  As Gemes says, 

This emphasis on socially valued achievements would provide some means of separating neurotic symptoms from sublimations but at the high cost of introducing a totally nonpsychoanalytic, indeed a nonpsychological, element to the definition, namely, that of social valuation.  One, presumably uncomfortable, consequence of such an account would be that as social values change, behavior that was at one time pathological would become a sublimation (40-1).

Thus it seems that a fundamental notion in psychoanalysis is not to be explained in strictly psychoanalytical terms.  Even more worrying, these terms seem irredeemably normative and thus run against Freud’s general claim to be providing a merely scientific/descriptive account of psychological phenomena (41).

This is the appropriate point to introduce what according to Gemes is the solution Nietzsche offers: instead of relying on cultural norms to distinguish between the two manners of redirecting drives, Nietzsche distinguishes sublimations from neurosis on the basis of the individual’s own organization of drives.  This provides a strictly psychoanalytic definition for the important concept of sublimation.

According to Nietzsche:

In the case of neurosis, redirected drives are disorganized because they have each been redirected toward different, extraneous ends.  However, in the case of sublimation, drives are redirected and organized toward the unifying aim of a master drive.  

With repression, a weaker drive is cast off and suppressed.  In sublimation, the weaker drives are kept active in being redirected toward the end of the master drive.  

Repression and neurosis produce disintegration while sublimation produces a unified individual.  This solution, offered by Nietzsche, differentiates between the terms, sublimation and neurosis, on a strictly psychoanalytic basis and without recourse to social and cultural norms.  

Now that I’ve finished summarizing the basic argument in the essay by Gemes, I’d like to take a look at the relationship of both drive unification to the “strong will” and of drive disintegration to the “weak will”. 

Nietzsche writes:

The multitude and disgregation of impulses and the lack of any systematic order among them results in a “weak will”; their coordination under a single predominant impulse results in a “strong” will: in the first case it is the oscillation and lack of gravity; in the latter, the precision and clarity of direction (KSA 13:14[219]).

So Nietzsche would probably accept the claim that both our repressions and neuroses result in a “weak will”, and also that the sublimation of our drives under an organizing drive’s aim results in a unified individual with a “strong will”.  

Take the following section from Nietzsche as briefly describing the unifying process of sublimation:

To become what one is, one must not have the slightest notion of what one is. […] The whole surface of consciousness—consciousness is a surface—must be kept clear of all great imperatives. […] Meanwhile the organizing “idea” that is destined to rule keeps growing deep down—it begins to command; slowly it leads us back from side roads and wrong roads; it prepares single qualities and fitnesses that will one day prove to be indispensable as a means toward the whole—one by one, it trains all subservient capacities before giving any hint of the dominant task, “goal,” “aim,” or “meaning” (EH II: 9).

The master drive is the “organizing ‘idea’” that slowly collects weaker drives by sublimating each, in turn, toward its aim.  As Gemes says, “This notion of training subservient drives is to be explicated in terms of the redirection of those drives away from their initial, primary goal toward a secondary goal that is more in line with the master drive” (47).  

In the prior quote from his notebooks on the weak and strong will (KSA 13:14[219]), we can see that Nietzsche labels the disorganized individual “weak willed” and the unified individual “strong willed”.  Taking this into consideration, let me conclude with an aside: by taking “will” to mean “the ability to resist temptation,” we can imagine how a disorganized individual might be easily tempted, distracted, seduced, and might helplessly react to various stimuli in an automatic manner.  On the other hand, the unified, “strong willed” individual resists temptation and is strong enough to not be distracted from his aim; he pursues his task with resolve and is able to tolerate stimuli without needing to react.   

Gemes, Ken (2009), “Freud and Nietzsche on Sublimation,” The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 38: 38-59.