ABSTRACT
Drawing on Lacan’s discussion of sublimation in his 1959–1960 seminar The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, this chapter endeavours to resolve two fundamental tensions permeating Freud’s conception of the creative process. The first (largely theoretical) tension concerns the disparity between the creative force of sublimation and the purportedly derivative character of its (sublime) outcomes. Relying on Lacan’s definition of sublimation as the elevation of an object to the dignity of the Thing, it is demonstrated how this first tension can be alleviated when sublimation is interpreted as a Hegelian process of sublation (or creative destruction), because it renders sublimation intrinsically destructive and its (sublime) outcomes as partially creative. The second (distinctly clinical) tension concerns the vexed relationship between the sublime, as the outcome of an artistic creative process, and the function of creativity within the psychoanalytic treatment. Here, it is argued that a possible answer to the question concerning the clinical value of sublimation may be found in Lacan’s formula for the fundamental fantasy, which is simultaneously a space of desire and the primary psychic factor modulating the relation between the subject and the object. Whereas the artistic Thing (the sublime outcome of sublimation) stems from a laborious process of making and re-making, which contributes to the construction of a fantasy, the patient may arrive at a clinically similar point of creative destruction via an extensive process of working-through, which coincides with a protracted commitment to locating and dis-locating the signifier. The conclusion is that a psychoanalytic treatment process contains within itself the power of creative destruction, whilst an artistic act of (sublime) creation may also be conceived as psychoanalytically productive.
