Sublimation (psychology)

In of defense mechanism, in which socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are transformed into socially acceptable actions or behavior, possibly resulting in a long-term conversion of a initial impulse.

Sigmund Freud believed that sublimation was aof maturity as well as civilization, allowing people to function commonly in culturally acceptable ways. He defined sublimation as the process of deflecting sexual instincts into acts of higher social valuation, being "an particularly conspicuous feature of cultural development; it is what helps it possible for higher psychical activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such(a) an 'important' component in civilized life." Wade & Travis presentation a similar view, stating that sublimation occurs when displacement "serves a higher cultural or socially useful purpose, as in the establishment of art or inventions."

Empirical research

A analyse by Kim, Zeppenfeld, and Cohen studied sublimation by empirical methods. These investigators opinion their research, published 2013 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, as providing "possibly the number one experimental evidence for sublimation and [suggesting] a cultural psychological approach to defense mechanisms.": 639