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consciousness (isolation of affect or repression, respectively), or both – although the mind can attempt to relieve affects by shutting out of consciousness a wish, guilt, shame, perception, an object representation, or by shutting off the activity of an ego function (“inhibition,” [Freud 1926; Blackman 2003]). The mental protection offered by defenses can be distinguished from the propulsive and adaptive activities of autonomous ego functions and ego strengths. In fact, defenses often come into play when ego strengths are overwhelmed and the autonomous ego is actually threatened (“traumatic anxiety”) or imagined to be threatened (“signal anxiety”). One of the ‘taken for granted’ Hartmann’s contributions in this context lies in the widely accepted notion that defenses may have had originally developmentally-dynamically adaptive purpose (Hartmann 1939). Building on Freud ’s (1905) initial constructs about changes in cathexes, and Hartmann ’s and Kris ’s (1955) elaborations on the neutralization of drive “energy,” sublimation can today be considered to occur when an unrealizable (drive) wish or desire is repressed, projected and symbolized, then integrated with developing autonomous ego functions (Blackman, 2010). For example, when a boy realizes he cannot bear children, his wish for a child can be displaced and symbolized onto his wish for a dog. As he reads and is taught about dog rearing (use of intellect), and becomes skilled at it, his love and activities with his dog are integrated into a sublimatory activity. Later he may become a psychologist or a physician, as the original sublimation becomes more complex, attaining the rank of an “ego interest” (Hartmann, 1939). Because the activity involves intellect, integration, abstraction ability, superego functioning (ethics), and empathy for patients, such a career choice is no longer easily reducible to the original symbolizations and integration with autonomous ego functioning. It is only in situations where career choice, for example, becomes conflictual and troubling, that deconstruction of the symbolism of the original sublimation may be necessary during analytic treatment. Failures in sublimation (de Mijolla-Mellor 2005), can lead to severe psychopathology during child and adolescent development, especially anfractuous compromise formations involving sex and violence. As opposed to such a developmental disturbance, secondary inhibition of an already developed ego interest can be seen in ‘success neuroses’ (Freud, 1916) and in sudden disturbances in adults’ hobbies (Cath et al., 1977), where the activity has become re-instinctualized . Cath gives an example of an excellent woman tennis player who suddenly lost her motor control (inhibition of ego function) due to a guilt reaction after someone commented to her that tennis was a “good way to get out your aggression.” In the area of exploration of arts and creativity, the theoretical shift from the view of sublimation as another ego defense , albeit with redeeming social value, to being a significant means of promoting ego strength (and by implication a means of expansion of self and object representational and symbolic range), exemplified by Gilbert Rose ’s (1990) weaving together and extending Hartmann’s, Kris’ and Arlow’s conceptualizations, are specified below in the section of Inter-Disciplinary Studies.
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