25

Based on a close reading of The Ego and the Id, this article sets out to show the present relevance of the Freudian hypothesis of 1923 concerning the intrinsically contradictory nature of sublimation, between the success of a salvatory operation of transformation of the libido and the corollary risk of unbinding between Eros and death drive. It emphasizes the great difference between the precise definition of sublimation as the metamorphosis of infantile sexual polymorphism into artistic and literary polymorphism, and its definition as simple desexualization, which easily evolves into depressive desublimation. When repression is no longer sufficient, splitting appears, and we are perhaps then dealing with a borderline state of neurosis: we can surmise that a hallucinatory wave threatens the ego and calls for recourse to sublimation as an emergency solution. Splitting or sublimation? that is then the question. Classic literary examples (Hugo, Breton, Aragon, Gracq) illustrate this hypothesis – which also sheds light on modern anti-sublimations, in particular certain trends in contemporary art and adolescent countercultures, for which unbinding is a value. Other forms of creation suggest more positive outcomes, where the contradiction between the drives and the aesthetics of the sublime is less strained.