On Finding Out How We Don't Know Ourselves in Therapy and Counselling. (On Defences, Part Two.)

Welcome to my series of posts on the concept of defence mechanisms, and on how this concept can help us to understand ourselves in psychotherapy and counselling. If you haven't read my prior post on defence mechanisms, you may find it helpful to read it now as an introduction, then return to read this post.

In this post today we turn our attention to the defence mechanism of sublimation. We sublimate when we transform a socially unacceptable urge into an urge that is beneficial and acceptable to the community. An example is the religious tradition of celibacy, in which erotic urges or energy are transformed into spiritual and/or creative pursuits. When this works well, the conflict between the erotic urge and communal needs is circumvented, and the individual who is sublimating their sexual desire is not left frustrated, but instead experiences satisfaction via the creative or spiritual work that they accomplish. When this process of sublimation is working poorly, we see incidents such as the terrible phenomenon of sexual abuse being committed by catholic (and other) clergy. (Having said this, I'm sure these incidents of sexual abuse by clergy involves many other psychological processes, so please forgive the simplification.) 


Another example of sublimation may be the artist's relationship with the muse, in which the erotic energy towards the muse (a real or imaginary figure) fuels works of great creativity. It's worth noting that although psychoanalytic thought gets a lot of flack these days, at times seeming bizarre for it's reducing our ideas of life into strange contorted expressions of craving for sex, this is a misrepresentation of psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic thinking. The word erotic derives from eros, which is intimate or romantic love (as opposed to selfless love.) Psychotherapy understands the erotic as much wider and more important than mere sex, the erotic is an energy that creates intimacy, sex, romance, and a great deal of our passion and energy for life. 


The goal of psychoanalytic psychotherapy is not to dismantle all of a person's defences, but to help a person to graduate to using defences that serve them better. Healthy sublimation is regarded as one of the most mature and worthwhile defences. When other conflicts and less helpful defences are clearer out of the way, through psychotherapy or counselling a creative person may be able to clear their creative block, and free up more energy than ever before for satisfying creative work. A spiritual person whose sublimation is not serving them well, may be able to renegotiate their relationship with sexuality through therapy, hopefully with the outcome of feeling less frustrated and more connected to their spiritual side.