The Psychological Process of Sublimation
Citation: Bartlett, F.C. (1928). 'The psychological process of sublimation', Scientia 43: 89-98.
As to the occurrence of sublimation there can be no dispute. In one way or another it has been recognised by practising psychologists from time immemorial. But its importance for psychological theory is of later recognition. Here, as in many other cases, the genius of Freud saw the theoretical significance of what, in other directions, had long received practical assent and it is to Freud and his views that we now turn first whenever a discussion of sublimation is proposed.
To Freud the whole story of the gradual achievement of civilisation is one in which the crude and selfish instincts of man give place to the mutual esteem, the loyalty, discipline and comradeship upon which society is based. Every person, as he comes into a community, has to take part in this process by which civilised life has been built and by which alone it is maintained. He must "repeat the sacrifice of his instinctive pleasures for the common good".
This sacrifice is achieved when the energy which activates the primitive instincts is diverted into new channels along which, being itself attached to no specific end, but equally capable of seeking any end, it may perfectly well flow. "The sexual are among the most important of the instinctive forces thus utilized", he says. "They are in this way sublimated, [90] that is to say their energy is turned aside from its sexual goal and diverted to other ends, no longer sexual and socially more valuable" (2).
Take the primitive animal or man. All his impulses are directed towards self-gratification. We can, with sufficient accuracy, put all these together and call them sexual. That is it is the sexual urge that originally organises them all, and we can say at this level that self-gratification means either the satisfaction of a component impulse of the sex group, or direct gratification "incidental to reproduction". But many other impulses, not immediately belonging to the sex group, get connected with it inevitably by the course of life in society. These come gradually to the front, and then the whole aim of this group has changed, and can no longer be called sexual. The energy is the same, the direction of expression of the energy has altered. And since everybody agrees, more or less, that the later, or social, aims are to be more highly valued than the earlier, or selfish, aims we call the redirection of energy sublimation (3).
The hypothesis, then, involves these three points
1. Underlying all forms of human activity and helping in some way to bring them about is a store of free energy which can, within certain limits, be transferred from one aim to another.
2. The original aim for such energy is sexual.
3. The type of diversion of energy which is called sublimation consists essentially in using in the interests of society energy which originally furthers the self-gratification of the individual.
The third point, I think, exaggerates the opposition between the individual and society, and the second point has, as everybody knows, been hotly disputed, but it is the first of these three points only that I propose to discuss in the present paper.
It is interesting to consider first one or two relevant experimental investigations. [91]
K. S. Lashley tried to observe minutely how certain specifically directed activities actually are determined. He chose sexual behaviour because it seemed specially well adapted to show the strength of Freud's case. This is what he says: "Sexual behaviour consists of a number of acts each a definite response to a definite pattern of stimulation. These reflexes are independently conditioned by specific hormones, by nutritional factors and by habitual modification. There is no evidence here for the existence of free energy" (4).
Lashley then changed his point of attack. He thought that the removal of the possibility of sexual behaviour should, according to the doctrine of free energy, affect, favourably or unfavourably, certain other activities, the possibility of which still remained. He found that all the other activities which he could investigate proceeded in a perfectly normal manner. Obviously enough, however, this may not touch the point. To remove the physiological mechanism which makes sexual behaviour possible may leave any underlying "energy", whether special or general, wholly untouched.
Let us therefore turn to the extremely interesting attempt by Raymond Dodge to investigate experimentally the drainage theory of inhibition. It is assumed in this theory that the spread of excitation, so as to involve the cortex, draws off energy from a related reflex path, and so tends to inhibit the reflex reaction. Dodge chose the patellar and lid reflexes. He arranged that the stimulus should be reacted to both reflexly and by voluntary innervation, and measured the extent of each reaction accurately. The introduction of the voluntary response in no way affected the reflex reaction (5).
In all this work we are, no doubt, dealing with a level of reaction much below that at which the concept of sublimation is usually brought upon the field. But the notions behind the drainage theory and the common theory of sublimation are certainly analogous. The primary activity which is sublimated is usually considered to be very deepseated, primitive, relatively simple, of a dominantly instinctive order and [92] thus native to the organism concerned. The activities which come uppermost in sublimation are considered to be more recent, more highly developed, more complicated and definitely not native to the organism but learned. In both cases it is supposed that the emergence of the second draws energy away from the first. It is therefore at least interesting that Dodge's experiments should show no evidence for that transference of energy, with corresponding diminution of activity which the drainage theory demands.
It appears, in fact, fair to say that no experimental evidence of any cogency has ever been advanced to show that at a simple level of behaviour energy can be transferred from one aim to another. But this clearly does not prove the impossibility of such transference. Experimental technique may be at fault, or it may be that at high levels of human conduct principles have to be admitted which have no application to relatively simple modes of animal response. Evidence must therefore be sought from observational methods which cannot well be conducted in a laboratory.
One serious difficulty arises at once. It is freely admitted that in any case there are strict limits to the readiness with which energy can be re-directed. Freud has himself drawn attention to this fact, speaking of the "adhesiveness" of energy. This adhesiveness is held to vary from person to person, and its determining conditions remain "completely unknown".
Here, for example, is a man who at the age of fortyfive has developed a large and successful business. Urged by his wife and friends he abandons this. For a year and a half he goes round the world and is fairly contented. He comes back home and soon grows moody, discontented, unhappy. "You must do something", his friends say. "Yes; but what?" "Oh anything so long as it is something". He buys half a dozen motor cars, learns all kinds of card games and plays them continually, he takes up golf, he goes to race meetings - I am, needless to say, describing an actual case and all the while he is as unhappy as a man could be. We may call this "adhesiveness" of energy. But it is not the unusual case. It is the common case. To the naive belief that mental [93] activity can be turned from any direction into any direction is due the hollowness of most of the popular sympathy and advice that people receive who are thrown into some great depression or sorrow. "Work is the cure" everybody says. But the real facts are less simple.
The view that sublimation consists essentially in some process of redirection of free energy is however not the only one possible. There is another way of looking at the matter, very different in its theoretical significance from the first, for it entirely discards the notion of indifferent energy, but to my mind much more closely in agreement with fact. I will attempt to develop this view by describing a few illustrative cases.
Let us suppose that an individual is confronted by a dangerous situation which is also novel. A tendency to incompatible responses is then likely to arise. The danger tends to evoke a flight response, the novelty a curiosity response. Actual behaviour may take one of three or four forms. We may get simple flight or simple exploration, if the danger or the curiosity instinct is predominant. We may have alternation from one to the other, if each instinct is about equally powerful. Or we may have a combination of the two instinctive tendencies and the development of a new form of conduct, not native to the organism at all, which we may perhaps call adventurousness. There is wary exploration or a kind of vigilant retreat. The new form of behaviour gives scope for the expression of both the native instincts, but it is not reducible to either of them, or expressible in terms of the one added to the other. It is a genuine new practical achievement.
This case is less a matter of theory than might appear. Consider, for example, Watson's interesting, though somewhat objectionable, experiments with young children. Fear behaviour can be evoked in most young children, if not in all, by a sudden loud noise and by the sudden removal of support and, in the majority of cases apparently, by no other stimuli. If, however, a furry animal is produced concurrently with the sudden loud noise a number of times, the child shows fear in the presence of the animal, though now no sound may be [94] produced. This experimentally produced fear may be experimentally removed, or, at least, overcome. The method is to produce a situation in which two groups of tendencies are simultaneously operative. For example, with the animal a second child is now introduced who has not acquired this particular fear response. The second child strokes and fondles the animal. There is then awakened in the first child a tendency towards social emulation or imitation which counteracts the fear. Are we to say that the new tendency draws energy away from the old fear response, so that the latter does not get expressed, or only feebly gets expressed? From my observation of analogous cases of behaviour in young children I am convinced that this explanation would be inaccurate. Rather the new tendency affords a means by which the old reactions, the original curiosity and the acquired fear, can be re-organised. A new, more complex, attitude is adopted towards the exciting object. In certain cases the new attitude may break up into its constituents, and the curiosity or the fear gets as untrammelled an expression as ever. They have not weakened. They have not merely been replaced. But they have been synthesised, integrated, built up into a new practical achievement and a more complex attitude towards animals. In this attitude are wariness, interest, a certain tension of feeling, probably something in the nature of social assertiveness. These all find expression, but as they all find expression together the total behaviour cannot adequately be described in terms of the constituents regarded as isolated responses.
The two instances just considered are relatively simple. I will now take a more complex case of a man who, by a common process, had developed an abnormal fear of thunderstorms. When he was a young man this fear was intense and unconcealed; later, his whole attitude towards a thunderstorm underwent a most important change. How was this brought about? There were two groups of impulses, formerly playing no part in his reactions to thunder, but now highly effective. These were, first aesthetic interests, and second social reac- [95] tions. The man's aesthetic interests underwent marked development during the early years of his manhood. There was a ready way in which they could be connected With the storms, for he had an elder brother who, when they were both boys, had revelled in the beauty of the thunderstorm and had often tried, without success, to point it out to him. At last the aesthetic interests had been brought into genuine functional relationship with the fear. The result was, not that the fear had disappeared and certainly not that it was merely weakened, but that it was veritably changed, both as to outward expression and as to inward experience. Again various social impulses, of emulation, of protection, of self-respect and so on, had been integrated with the same group. This man's attitude to a thunderstorm is now an extraordinarily complex one, but it is at the same time stable enough, and very unlikely to lead to any undesirably abnormal conduct. The method by which this result has been achieved is essentially the same as in the other cases. Some master tendencies have been found through which those tendencies which in isolation threaten to produce dangerous abnormality can be organised together. The resulting conduct is stable and normal, not because it has drawn some underlying free energy from the undesirable reactions, but because it affords scope for the expression simultaneously of all of a large number of impulses and tendencies. This differs from the other cases, because much of the process of acquisition of the complex integration went on at the conscious level and was, in fact, consciously facilitated.
I will take one further illustration in order to bring out yet more definitely the importance of this last factor in all "high level" cases. This in the instance of a young officer who, during the late war, broke down into a very bad state of anxiety neurosis. He had joined the Army as an ordinary soldier, straight from a public school. He said that he joined as a private soldier in order that he might know at first hand about life in the ranks, in case, he should later have command. The real reason undoubtedly was that he both wanted to do his duty and to shirk responsibility. He was clever and adap- [96] table and he went through all the non-commissioned ranks, though he tried to escape advancement on each occasion on which it was offered him. Eventually he was persuaded to take commissioned rank. Shortly afterwards the mental crash came.
The story of the trouble is, of course, a complicated one. Much of the difficulty began, however, when, as a small and rather nervous boy, he used to be dragged out in front of the class at a preparatory school, by a stupid teacher, as particularly clever performer, and told that if he made mistakes or broke down everybody would laugh at him. Gradually he had built up an attitude according to which life was regarded as a kind of device for providing situations in which he would probably make some bad mistake and become a laughing-stock. Small wonder that the increasing responsibilities of his, war career had caused a collapse. What could be done! Here was no scope for drawing energy from one specific end and attaching it to another, for his peculiar difficulty infected all his behaviour down to the most trivial details. Only one thing was possible. The architecture of his reaction tendencies must be radically altered, built up anew, integrated in a wholly different manner. He had to learn to look upon practical difficulties as opportunities and not merely as obstacles, and he had to do this by building somehow upon that very social sensitiveness which was the foundation of his character and in one form the main cause of his distress. It was, in fact, to be a process of building up new ideals about life and people, within the operation of which all the old responses would find scope for expression, but in a transformed manner. This was the road along which he found his way to health.
Now when we consider these instances we find them all characterised by the same process, though the latter may be effected either unwittingly, as in our first two cases, or by the help of consciously directed effort, as in the last two cases. They all alike show the development of desirable reactions by a process of integration which operates, not by drawing energy from undesirable modes of conduct, but by giving scope for the expression of these in a wider setting which changes [97] their nature. The concept of free energy has disappeared. The concept of mere substitution, the replacement of one reaction by another, has disappeared. The good is now not a substitute for the bad. It is the bad transformed. Sublimation is not drainage, but synthesis.
The view which I have attempted to put forward may, at first sight, appear not radically different from the one which it seeks to replace. For when the new, sublimated reactions are established the old, undesirable reactions disappear entirely or at least find less emphatic expression. It will at once be said that this must mean that "energy" has been drawn away from them. I wish to maintain, however, that such a view involves a wholly unjustifiable theory of the basis of organic activity. All sublimations are really complex forms of behaviour which, if they are to be at all stable, involve the expression of just those very reaction tendencies which it is desired to avoid. I do not think that any physiologist or psychologist is justified in using the notion of an underlying, featureless "energy" which somehow puts specifically directed activities into operation, but is not itself specific to any activity. That such a notion should be widely current in modern biological writing seems to me a striking illustration of the unhappy tendency to import into the study of living activities uncritically used actions of popular physics.
All that we have the right to speak of, as we approach the problems of animal and human behaviour, is that every organism is dowered with a number of reaction tendencies, some relatively simple and native, some highly complex and acquired, all having specific direction. These at every level find expression in patterns or groups, and within the patterns, organising them, giving them their outstanding form, now one tendency and now another may take the lead. There is a kind of hierarchy of tendencies in every case which may remain relatively constant and which is the basis alike of individual and of social, or racial, differences. Our problem, both as theoretical and as practical psychologists, is to discover what reaction tendencies will combine one with another, and which are genuinely antipathetic one to another; with [98] what sort of content a given reaction tendency can most readily deal; and with what results, both as to behaviour, and, at a high level of conscious response, as to content, the combination of reactions will effect. So far as I can see, we gain absolutely nothing if, relapsing into mere speculation, we assert that all changes of behaviour are due to the shifting about of a wholly hypothetical "energy".
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