L A C A N ' S V I E W O F S U B L I M A T I O N

John Mul ler

In his New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933), Freud defines sublimation as follows: "A certain kind of modification of the aim and change of the object, in which our social valuation is taken into account, is described by us as 'sublimation'" (p. 97). In "The Ethics of Psychoanalysis" (1959-60), Lacan defines sublimation as the process that "elevates an object to the dignity of the Thing" (Vol. I, p. 149). 1 "The thing" is '% chose" in French and "das Ding" in German. The term has a long philosophical history from Aristotle to Heidegger 2 and is the term highlighted in Kant's "das Ding an sich,""the thing in itself," which lies beyond phenomenal appearances and is unknowable in itself. Now all of this would remain merely an academic exercise except that Lacan is struck by Freud's use of the term in describing the origin of object relations; and also that according to Lap[anche and Pon- tails (1967, p. 433), "the lack of a coherent theory of sublimation remains one of the lacunae in psycho-analytic thought."

Freud writes of das Ding in his essay "Negation" in a very specific man- ner. In the fifth paragraph he elaborates that function of judgment which affirms or disaffirms the possession by a Thing of a particular attribute, where "a Thing" in German is "einem Ding," and the attribute in question is the primordial "good" or "bad" which determines whether one takes it in or spits it out. In paragraph six Freud moves to the judgment of existence which is concerned with the real existence of something of which there is a presentation, the German for which is "eines vorgestellten Dinges." Here at issue is not whether what has been perceived (a Thing) ["ein Ding"] shall be taken into the ego or not, but whether something available in representa- tion can be refound in perception. This primordial level of judgment even- tually leads to the development ("Entwicklung") in which experience ("Erfahrung") has taught that existence must also be considered, and not just the attributes of"a Thing (an object of satisfaction)"; the German is "ein Ding (Befriedigu ngsobjekt)."

Freud is here presenting the transition between das Ding, as earliest arena of judgment, and the object as later source of satisfaction. He then

John Muller, Ph.D., Austen Riggs Center, Stockbridge, Mass.

The American journal of Psychoanalysis Vo[. 47, No. 4, 1987 © 1987 Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis

315

316 MULLER

enacts this transition by no longer referring to Ding (as he just has, three times) but instead now refers to "the object" three times: first, to "the exter- nal object," "das Objekt drausen," which is not necessarily present when its representation is reproduced. He goes on to speak of the aim of reality- testing as "not to find an object" ("Objekt') but to refind it, since "a precon- dition for the setting up of reality-testing is that objects ("Objekte") shall have been lost which once brought real satisfaction." Objects exist in the domain of satisfaction-frustration; das Ding does not, although it stands in a certain relation to them. We could say that experience constitutes objects precisely by negating das Ding.

As indicated earlier, Freud refers to the thing thirty years before his essay on "Negation," when, in section 17, Part 1, of the Project (1895, p. 393) he attempts to explain how judgments conjoin with memories to yield knowl- edge. He considers the example of a "fellow human being" ("Neben- mensch") who is the subject's "first satisfying object (and also his first hostile object) as well as his sole assisting force"-that is, the mother. Some of the "perceptual complexes" arising from this object are new, some are familiar because they "coincide in the subject with his own memory of quite similar visual impressions of his own body-a memory with which will be asso- ciated memories of movements experienced by himself." In other words, we know the other, our counterpart, our mother, by reference to our own movements, which take on meaning, in turn, by reference to the other. "For this reason," Freud writes, "it is on his fellow creatures that a human being first learns to cognize," and thus we find in Freud's object relations theory that self and other representations arise together. In any case, Freud concludes:

Thus the complex of a fellow-creature falls into two portions. One of these gives the impression of being a constant structure and remains as a self-contained thing; while the other can be understood by the activity of memory-that is, can be traced back to information about the subject's own body. This process of analyz- ing a perceptual complex is described as "cognizing" it. (pp. 393-394)

The first portion, that which is unknown because no attributions can be made about it, "gives the impression of being a constant structure" and "als Ding beisammenbleibt," and Freud italicizes Ding. The English translation, "and remains as a coherent 'thing'," is perverse because Freud is precisely contrasting it to the other "portion" which is coherent, intelligible, cogniz- able. The phrase "als Ding beisammenbleibt" means that a certain "portion" of the Nebenmensch remains self-contained, set apart, undifferentiated, undivided-"unassimilable," says Freud (1895, p. 423), or according to Lacan, impervious to our gaze and foreign to our cognition (Vol. I, p. 72).

LACAN'S VIEW OF SUBLIMATION 317

It is the mystery that persists in the object no matter how closely we apprehend it.

Lacan attempts to gain access, nonetheless, to the "thing" by referring to it as "this primordial field" (Vol. 1, p. 156), primordial insofar as it has to do with the pleasure principle, the mother, and the foundation of ethics:

And indeed one can say that the step taken by Freud at the level of the pleasure principle is this: it's to show us that there is no sovereign good; that the sov- ereign good which is das Ding, which is the mother, which is the object of incest, is a forbidden good, and that there is no other good. Such is the founda- tion, reversed in Freud, of the moral law. (Vol. 1, p. 96)

And further: das Ding "was there at the beginning, it is the first thing that was able to separate itself from everything that [the human being] began to name and articulate" (Vol. 1, p. 112). Das Ding, then, lies at the edge of signification, its early edge. And even for Kant, Lacan sees the problem as "a matter of this Wohl [or well-being], of this comfort of the subject insofar as he refers himself to das Ding at his horizon, insofar as this main- tenance at his horizon is the function in him of the pleasure principle" (Vol. 1, p. 100).

But the pleasure principle makes an oblique approach to das Ding, "Das Ding insofar as man, in order to follow the path of his pleasure, must liter- ally circle around it" (Vol. 1, p. 127). A certain distance from das Ding is required and maintained by the prohibition of incest, which both keeps us from and fixates us on the first object of our desire, the unforgettable pre- historic Other that is also, as Lacan puts it, our "excluded interior" (Vol. 1, pp. 99, 135).

This excluded interior or void is found in the other, in ourselves, and in objects. In certain conditions woman comes to represent das Ding, as in the significance attached to her in the songs and rituals of courtly love that exalt the love object as the impossible and cruel object of man's desire (Vol. 2, pp. 141-142). During sexual intercourse, moreover, "in a single moment something can be touched whereby one being is for another being at the simultaneously living and dead place of the thing" (Vol. 2, p. 250). It can appear in the intimate saying of "you": "Toi-You, which contains some sort of defense. And I will say that at the moment when this "toi" is pronounced, it is completely, and not elsewhere, in you that there arises, there resides that which I have presented to you today as das Ding" (Vol. 1, p. 76). And such intimacy has its roots in the earliest encounter:

I mean that everything that develops at the level of the inter-psychology of infant- mother, and that is so poorly expressed in the usual categories of frustration,

318 MULLER

gratification, and dependence.., is only an immense development of the essen- tial, fundamental character of the maternal thing. Of the mother insofar as she occupies the place of this thing, of das Ding. (Vol. 1, p. 92)

But das Ding also appears as the "excluded interior" of the subject as, for example, when confronted by the possibility of annihilation:

And I'm not making this up, since every day they wave in front of us a weapon that could truly undermine the planet itself as the support of humanity. In short, it's enough that you bring yourself to this thing, perhaps made a little more pres- ent to us by the progress of knowledge, which has never been in man's imagina- tion, although it has not failed to play with the idea of the end of the world. Bring yourself, then, to this confrontation with the moment when a man, or a group of men, can bring it about that for the totality of the human species the whole ques- tion of existence [s in suspense, and you will then see inside yourselves that at this moment das Ding is found on the side of the subject (Vol. 1, p. 139).

But perhaps the simplest and most direct experience of das Ding is in the clay pot, one of the earliest signifiers of the presence of human beings in an area (Vol. 1, p. 161). The potter has fashioned the pot so as to embrace and make present a void, "the void at the centerof the real which is called the thing" (Vol. 1, p. 163). This void is the lost object of desire, which we try to find again but which never existed in the beg inn ing-or rather, existed as this void in the other and in ourselves, this void that instigates desire, this void as das Ding, "as absolute other of the subject" (Vol. 1, p. 72), "this thing which is precisely characterized by this, that it is impossible for us to imagine it . . . . And the problem of sublimation is situated there" (Vol. 1, p. 167).

But what does das Ding have to do with sublimation? It has to do with the satisfaction of drives, for "what is at the level of das Ding when it is revealed" is "the place of the drives" (Vol. 1, p. 146). Lacan repeats how Freud stressed that "sublimation i s . . . linked to the drives . . . . In sublima- tion it's a matter of satisfaction of the drives" (Vo[. 1, p. 146), and this is because the field of das Ding has to do with "the relations of the subject with something primordial in his attachment for the object, the most fundamental, the most archaic object" (Vol. 1, p. 142). It is this object that instigates the drive, translated by Lacan as "d~rive" (Vol. 1, p. 147), com- bining "derived," "drive," "drifting," and "debanking" insofar as the drive, detoured from its aim, is a channeling of desire shunted from one path of movement to another along unconscious chains of signifiers.

Now the Kleinians view sublimation as repairing the fantasized lesions in the maternal body, and this "Kleinian myth," as Lacan calls it (Vol. 1, p. 142), can be read as referring to the primordial field of das Ding, a field in

LACAN'S VIEW OF SUBLIMATION 319

which a cavity is always operative. But what has this void got to do with sublimation? If sublimation is that which elevates an object to the dignity of das Ding by transforming it (Vol. 1, p. 158), then sublimation has some crucial role for the process wherein desire attempts to refind its original ob- ject and to somehow affirm it as the empty center. Das Ding is "always in some manner represented by a void precisely insofar as it cannot be represented by any other thing, or, more exactly, because it can only be represented by another thing. But in every form of sublimation the void will be determinative (Vol. 1, p. 175).

The void is determinative in the three forms of sublimation highlighted by Freud-religion, science, and a r t -bu t each of them circles around the void in its own way. Religion consists of all the modes of evading this void by a kind of respectful displacement (Vol. 1, pp. 175, 177); science makes use of the mechanism of foreclosure in order to reject the perspective and presence of das Ding. Thus science takes reality as a positive given, and this giveness excludes the empty center; this exclusion represses desire by abolishing the cause of desire and this leads to the pretended objectivity and loss of the subject in science-or at least before nuclear and astro- physics. In the case of art the situation is more complex: in art das Ding is repressed (Vol. 1, p. 177), but this takes place by means of a representation that serves to disguise the presence ofdas Ding and, in disguising, reveal its contou rs:

We begin to glimpse the object at the level of sublimation to the extent that it is inseparable from imaginary and especially cultural elaborations; and this is not because the collectivity recognizes them purely and simply as useful objects, but finds there the direction, the field of detente whereby it can in some way delude itself regarding das Ding, whereby it can colonize with its imaginary formations this field ofdas Ding. (Vol. 1, p. 131)

The earliest cave painting achieves this d~tente by casting its representa- tions on the linings of a cavity (Vol. 1, p. 191); temples were organized around a central cavity (Vol. 1, p. 192), and "primitive architecture" can be defined as "something organized around a void." Painting, in turn, is itself initially something organized around a void, as on the insides of walls, and in time, in the development of perspective and the gradual mastery of the illusion of space (Vol. 1, p. 192).

Now, I'd like to share an example from my own practice. A young, 24-year-old man, who had been hospitalized for more than two years, took up painting in the hospital. Following a severe psychotic episode, as the symptoms went into remission, he entered into a long course of depres- sion. During this time he gradually became more and more in touch with

320 MULLER

what he called an "emptiness" inside himself, as is very commonly said by patients. He became increasingly depressed and one night became pan- icky about going into the space of his room because he was afraid he would have the compulsion to hang himself. Consequently, he asked that the door be locked, but as he left he took his white bed sheet with him and put it outside on the corridor floor, and went and got some paint and pro- ceeded to paint this large sheet. The next morning when he came into his session he described this event and he ended by saying, "1 hanged the painting instead of myself."

I would now like to give a somewhat long example from a paper by Mel- anie Klein, which Lacan refers to at some length in these seminars. The paper is titled "Infantile Anxiety Situations Reflected in a Work of Art and in the Creative Impulse" (1929). Klein develops the theme of an empty space correlative with depression that evokes a response in which a woman paints a picture on a wall:

In an article entitled 'The Empty Space,' Karin Michaelis gives an account of the development of her friend, Ruth Kjar [who went on to be a painter]. Beautiful, rich and independent, she spent a great part of her life travelling, and was con- stantly leaving her house upon which she had expended so much care and taste. She was subject at times to fits of deep depression, which Karin Michaelis describes as follows: 'There was only one dark spot in her life. In the midst of the happiness which was natural to her, and seemed so untroubled, she would sud~ denly be plunged into the deepest melancholy. A melancholy that was suicidal. If she tried to account for this, she would say something to this effect: "There is an empty space in me, which I can never fill."'

The time came when Ruth Kjar married, and she seemed perfectly happy. But after a short time the fits of melancholy recurred. In Karin Michaelis's words: q-he accursed empty space was once more empty.' Her husband's brother was one of the greatest painters in the country, and his best pictures decorated the walls of the house. But before Christmas this brother-in-law took away one picture, which he had only lent to her. The picture was sold. This left an empty space on the wall, which in some inexplicable way seemed to coincide with the empty space within her. She sank into a state of the most profound sadness. The blank space on the wall caused her to forget her beautiful home, her happiness, her friends, every- thing. Of course, a new picture could be got, and would be got, but it took time; one had to look about to find just the right one.

'The empty space grinned hideously down at her. `The husband and wife were sitting opposite one another at the breakfast table.

Ruth's eyes were clouded with hopeless despair. Suddenly, however, her face was transfigured with a smile: "1'11 tell you what! I think I will tryto daub a little on the wall myself, until we get a new picture!" "Do, my darling," said her husband.

'He had hardly left the room when, in a perfect fever, she had rung up the colour-shop to order the paints which her brother-in-law generally used, brushes,

LACAN'S VIEW OF SUBLIMATION 321

palette, and all the rest of the "gear," to be sent up at once. She herself had not the remotest idea of how to begin. She had never squeezed paint out of a tube, laid the ground-colour on a canvas or mixed colours on a palette. Whilst the things were coming, she stood before the empty wall with a piece of black chalk in her hand and made strokes at random as they came into her head.

'Towards evening her husband returned, and she ran to meet him with a hectic brilliance in her eyes. She was not going to be ill, was she? She drew him with her, saying: "Come, you will see!" And he saw. He could not take his eyes from the sight; could not take it in, did not believe it, could not believe it. Ruth threw herself on a sofa in a state of deadly exhaustion: "Do you think it at all possible?"

"The same evening they sent for the brother-in-law. Ruth palpitated with anxiety as to the verdict of the connoisseur. But the artist exclaimed immediately: "You don't imagine you can persuade me that you painted that! What a damned lie! This picture was painted by an old and experienced artist. Who the devil is he? I don't know him!"

'That night Ruth could not sleep much. The picture on the wall had been painted, that was certain-it was not a dream. But how had it happened? And what next?

'She was on fire, devoured by ardour within. She must prove to herself that the divine sensation, the unspeakable sense of happiness that she had felt could be repeated.'

Karin Michaelis then adds that after this first attempt, Ruth Kjar painted several masterly pictures, and had them exhibited to the critics and the public. (Klein, 1929, pp. 232-234)

Lacan goes on to say that no correct evaluation of sublimation in art is possible if we cannot account for the fact that "every work of art, especially in the Fine Arts, is historically dated" (Vol. 1, p. 143) -whether this be painting, sculpture, writing, music, drama. Art uses lures and disguises that are current in order to cover over das Ding and thereby make it accessible, as disguised, to its contemporaries. Sublimation does indeed provide access to das Ding through the available sensuous material and concep- tualizations used in various art forms to fashion a signifying representation. But "this effort at sublimation," according to Lacan, "it's true and it's not true. I mean that there is an illusion" (Vol. 1, p. 183). The disguise is not presented as a means of cancelling the void, it is not a reaction formation, and still less is it a mirroring of the self; rather, the disguise is there to give access to the void, by creating an illusion through which it can appear. Sublimation's mode of disguising is such that it brings about "the revelation of das Ding beyond the object" (Vol. 1, p. 152).

Das Ding is revealed as "beyond" the object:

We are led to distinguish.., the object, even though it specifies the directions, the points of attraction, of man in his openness, in his world, for all that it interests

322 MULLER

him insofar as it is more or less his image, his reflection. This object is precisely not the thing. (Vol. I, p. 149)

The object is "ceaselessly interchangeable wi th the love which the subject had for his own image" (Vol. 1, p. 129) and is therefore subject to narcis- sistic distortions:

In "Introduction to Narcissism" Freud stresses the difference, regarding the func- tion of the object, between what is, properly speaking, sublimation and what is idealization insofar as idealization is something with a completely different func- tion, insofar as it involves identification of a subject with an object.

Sublimation is something else entirely. (Vol. 1, p. 147)

Subl imation can be characterized as the inverse of identi f icat ion. In subli- mation desire seeks to make present das Ding as cause of desire, whi le identi f ication serves to evade the subject's desire and its impossible object. In subl imat ion the object that is fashioned serves to reveal das Ding as beyond it, whi le identi f icat ion fashions objects and self in a mirror ing rela- t ionship. In subl imation disguise is openly avowed as a form of playful il lu- sion whi le in identi f icat ion disguise is denied or concealed as camouflage. Finally, in subl imat ion truth is attained insofar as the transformed object appears for the first t ime in this way as signifying and opening onto das Ding, an opening on the newness of the prehistoric, whi le identi f icat ion constructs replicas and even forgeries as pretended developments. In a review of Matisse by Pierre Schneider (Berkshire Eagle, Pittsfield, Mass., December I , 1984), Michael Brenson notes that by shift ing from art as mimesis (imitation) to art as metexis (participation), Matisse sought to " touch 'the deep gravity which persists in every human being' and arrive at the threshold of what was inf inite and unknown. "

In closing, we can ask, What has subl imation to do with ethics, and what sort of ethics does Lacan specify for the psychoanalyt ic field? Lacan lists four ethical guidel ines (Vol. 2, p. 277):

1. The only thing about which one can be guilty is to have given up on one's desire.

2. The definition of the hero is, he who can be betrayed with impunity. 3. For the common man betrayal, which almost always occurs, has the effect of

driving him back in decisive fashion, to the service des biens, [the concern for values and goods], but with this condition, that he will never find in it that which truly orients him in it.

4. Finally, goods, their field and their domain, naturally exist-there is no ques- tion of denying them, but to reverse perspective I propose this to you: there is no good other than what can serve to pay the price for the access to des i re . . . desire defined elsewhere as the metonymy of our being.

LACAN'S VIEW OF SUBLIMATION 323

Desire as metonymy, as the ever-displaced want of our being, our manque-~-~tre, can never be satisfied. Thus "ne c6dez pas sur son d~sir," "don't give up on your desire," is no libertarian slogan. It means, I think, don't give up on it by settling for an alternative through fear, egotism, or a desire for security. This will lead to guilt, depression, addictions, neurotic symptoms, or perverse solutions in which we impose on others what we think they desire or what we think is good for them. But since to truly real- ize one's desire is impossible, the "sole satisfaction permitted by the analytic promise" (Vol. 2, p. 252) is sublimation, for even if it is illusory, it provides access to the structure of desire and allows one to experience pleasure by playing in this primordial field.

NOTES

1. Further references to volume and page numbers in the text are to this work of Lacan. 2. See Heideggeffs essay, "The Thing" (1950), whose theme of the potter's clay jug has obvi-

ously influenced Lacan's analysis.

REFERENCES

Freud, S. (1895). Project for a scientific psychology. In M. Bonaparte, A. Freud, and E. Kris (Eds.), The Origins of Psychoanalysis: Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts and Notes, transl. E. Mosbacher and J. Strachey. New York: Basic Books, 1954.

Freud, S. (1925). Negation. Standard Edition, Vol. 19, pp. 235-239. London: Hogarth, 1961.

Freud, S. (1933). New introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. Standard Edition, Vol. 22, pp. 5-182. London: Hogarth, 1964.

Heidegger, M. (1950). The thing. In Poetry, Language, Thought, transl. A. Hofstadter, pp. 165-186. New York: Harper Colophon, 1975.

Klein, M. (1929). Infantile anxiety-situations reflected in a work of art and in the creative impulse. In Contributions to Psychoanalysis, 1921-1945, pp. 227-235. London: Hogarth, 1948.

Lacan, J. (1959-60). L'ethique de la psychanalyse, Vols. land II. Unpublished manu- script. Imprimerie BOSC Fr~res-Lyon. Depot legal No. 7356-3rd trimester, 1981. (Now published by Seuil, Paris, 1986.)

Laplanche, J., and Pontalis, J.-B. (1967). The Language of Psychoanalysis, transl. D. Nicholson-Smith. New York: Norton, 1973.

Address correspondence to: John Muller, Ph.D., Austen Riggs Center, Stockbridge, Mass. 01262.