ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to review the positions on sublimation in psychoanalytic theory and highlights the heart of the contemporary debate that has been pursued principally by French authors, with the help of a few significant Italian and English-speaking contributions. It examines the relationship of sublimation with other concepts that today are central to psychoanalytic theory, in particular symbolisation, mourning, and trauma. In sublimation detachment occurs from the object of desire, whilst in the process it is the object, the maternal body that is the principal actor on stageThe consequences and the repercussions, including the clinical ones, other than opening a whole new line of further studies, have more to do with learning than with the actual outcome of sublimation. At first glance there is a very close relationship between mourning and sublimation: many patients come to our first consultation after bereavement or crisis.
