Sublimation is considered by many to be the most successful of all ego defenses. If a girl’s love leave her for someone else, she might fly into a rage and create tantrums like destroying all related to him… or she might instead write a poem that expresses how she feels. The first instance (destroying up all her partner’s items ) is an example of displacement, the redirection of uncomfortable feelings towards someone or something less important, which is an immature ego defense. The second instance (writing a poem) is an example of sublimation, the channelling of uncomfortable feelings into socially condoned and often productive activities, which is a much more mature ego defense. And if the poem or poet were one day to be recognized, would that not be the sweetest revenge? Another example of sublimation is the person with sadistic or homicidal urges Who joins the military to provide an outlet for these urges, or Who, like Justice Wargrave in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, becomes a judge who liberally awards the death penalty in murder cases.

1. Compiled by Col Mukteshwar Prasad(Retd), MTech
(IITD),CE(I),FIE(I),FIETE,FISLE,FInstOD,AMCSI
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Ego Defense Mechnism/
Self-Deception Part 10:
Sublimation

2. Sublimation
 Sublimation is considered by many to be the most successful of all ego
defenses.
 If a girl’s love leave her for someone else, she might fly into a rage and
create tantrums like destroying all related to him… or she might instead
write a poem that expresses how she feels.
 The first instance (destroying up all her partner’s items ) is an example of
displacement, the redirection of uncomfortable feelings towards someone or
something less important, which is an immature ego defense.
 The second instance (writing a poem) is an example of sublimation, the
channelling of uncomfortable feelings into socially condoned and often
productive activities, which is a much more mature ego defense.
 And if the poem or poet were one day to be recognized, would that not be the
sweetest revenge?
 Another example of sublimation is the person with sadistic or homicidal
urges
 Who joins the military to provide an outlet for these urges, or
 Who, like Justice Wargrave in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None,
becomes a judge who liberally awards the death penalty in murder cases.

3. Sublimation example : Justice Wargrave in Agatha
Christie’s And Then There Were None
 Right at the end of the novel, in the postscript, a fishing trawler dredges up a
bottle just off the Devon coast.
 The bottle contains the confession of the late Wargrave in which he
reveals a lifelong sadistic temperament juxtaposed with a fierce sense
of justice.
 Though he had longed to torture, terrify, and kill, he could not justify
harming innocent people:
 So instead he became a ‘hanging judge’ and thrilled at the sight
of convicted (and guilty) people trembling with fear.

4. Sublimation example : Leonardo da Vinci
 Leonardo da Vinci arguably sublimed his homosexuality into his art.
 Leonardo never showed any interest in women and even wrote that
heterosexual intercourse disgusted him.
 He never married but chose instead to surround himself with beautiful
young men, most notably Salai (a nickname meaning ‘little devil’) and
Melzi, both of whom Leonardo included in his last will and testament.
 In 1476, at the age of 24, Leonardo was twice charged with sodomy, even
though the charges were common in the Florence of the quattrocento and
later dropped for want of witnesses.
 As in his life so in his art: Leonardo drew many more male than female
nudes and paid much more attention to the male genitals.
 Many of the figures in his paintings appear androgynous, especially
the John the Baptist who, complete with the fine curls of Salai, looks
nothing like the biblical cousin of Jesus and everything like Salai or,
indeed, Mona Lisa.
 And if all that were not enough, there is also a drawing, The Incarnate
Angel, from the school of Leonardo that appears to be a humorous take
on the John the Baptist, portraying John/Salai with a big, fat erection.

5. Sublimation example : Gustav von Aschenbach, the
middle-aged protagonist of Thomas Mann’s Death in
Venice.
 Another example of the sublimation of a sexual impulse is that of Gustav von
Aschenbach, the middle-aged protagonist of Thomas Mann’s Death in
Venice.
 Aschenbach, who is the alter ego of Mann, is a famous writer suffering
from writer’s block.
 While staying at the Grand Hôtel des Bains on Venice’s Lido Island, he is
taken by the sight of a beautiful adolescent boy called Tadzio who is
residing at the hotel with his aristocratic family.
 Aschenbach becomes more and more obsessed with Tadzio, even though
he never talks to him and still less touches him.
 Instead, he sublimes his longing, which he eventually recognizes as
sexual, into his writing.
 Thus, in Chapter 4:
 "...he, in full sight of his idol and under his canvas, worked on his little
treatise – those one-and-a-half pages of exquisite prose, the honesty,
nobility and emotional deepness of which caused it to be much admired
within a short time. It is probably better that the world knows only the