OUTCOMES OF CONFLICT 1. Sublimation.—This term is applied to a process whereby the energy pertaining to a given sexual impulse can lose its spe cifically sexual exciting character and the impulse in its search for gratification be directed towards a non-sexual, and usually social, goal. The process is entirely an unconscious one and can neither be initiated nor guided by any deliberate effort. It oc curs most characteristically in respect of the infantile elements ("component impulses") out of which the sexual instinct as a whole is developed. It is a reversible process, that is to say, the change is not brought about once and for all. Sublimations are of varying stability, and in certain circumstances the energy attach ing to them can "regress" to its primitive form. The function of sublimation is evidently to achieve at the same time a permissible gratification for impulses which in their unaltered state would be condemned and checked and to make use of the energy thus set free for the various needs and interests of life.
This is a barrier set up to dam back the particular repressed impulse. For instance, modesty is developed to check any tendency to self-display ; cleanliness to check the infantile fondness for playing with dirt. The energy of a reaction-formation is aimed in the opposite direction to the original impulse, whereas that of sublimations flows in the same direction. Another difference is that with sublimation it is de rived from the original impulse, being merely a transformation of it, but with reaction-formations it is derived from the ego or non sexual part of the mind, opposed to the repressed impulses.
durable character traits, such as ambitiousness, parsimony, timidity, and so on, have been traced to certain mental attitudes which became fixed in connec tion with the early unconscious conflicts. A very great part of the whole character originates in this way. A given trait may partake of the nature of a sublimation or of that of a reaction f ormation, but more often it is a complex product. The trans formation of the unconscious material (in connection with the primary conflicts) into these character traits may be incomplete, in which case we speak of a neurotic character. They are then intermediate between normal character traits and neurotic symptoms, the neurosis being built into the very structure of the character instead of appearing, as it usually does, in the form of something alien imposed from without. Such cases are harder to modify therapeutically than the commoner neurotic ones.
This is the last, but by no means the least fre quent, outcome of unconscious conflicts. Its appearance in this series illustrates the very important consideration, which was dealt with at some length earlier, to the effect that neurotic man ifestations represent nothing more than one particular mode of responding to general mental situations; their interest is rather sociological than pathological. The importance of them to psychology as a science lies in the fact that only by the avenue of neurotic manifestations, or borderline phenomena closely allied to them, is it possible to investigate the deeper strata of the mind, i.e., the foundation on which the rest is built.
