ABSTRACT
In surveying psychoanalytic theories of sublimation, this chapter suggests that a wide range of psychological functioning is engaged in the act of creating through a sensible medium as well as in the effects produced by the object created. Gustav Mahler's Eighth Symphony is the first symphony written primarily for the voice as an instrument; it uses two texts that direct the reader to a transcendent object. Mahler chose as his first text in the Eighth Symphony a venerable Latin religious hymn, the Veni Creator Spiritus, and one can attempt to see how it circles around das Ding. Sublimation approaches the Real, the nameless, through the presentation of what Jacques Lacan called das Ding, "the Thing". Lacan follows Sigmund Freud in identifying the three fields of sublimation as science, religion, and art. Each takes its own position toward das Ding. Art represses das Ding by covering its place with a representation.
