“[The] most shortsighted and pernicious way of thinking wants to make the great sources of energy, those wild torrents of the soul that often stream forth so dangerously and overwhelmingly, dry up altogether, instead of taking their power into its service and economizing it.”
(Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power)
Friedrich Nietzsche conceived of the human psyche as a bundle of drives and affects. The most powerful of these come from the animal side of our nature. Whether it be the drive to acquire material goods, the drives for sex, power, aggression, belonging, or self-preservation, none of us can escape the influence of millions of years of evolution that embedded these drives within us. Nor can we escape the affects associated with these drives, be it the anger and rage of aggression, the fear and anxiety that push us to belong, the lust of sex, or the greed, envy, and jealousy that arise from our need to acquire material goods.
While these drives and affects serve important purposes for our survival and well-being, an unbridled expression of them can ruin a life. Too much aggression can lead to violence. Too much anger can ruin social relationships. Too great a need for power can corrupt. Following every whim of our sex drive can turn us into a sex addict, serial cheater, or worse. In this video, we explore why most people’s attempts to control the animal side of their nature backfire, and we examine why Nietzsche believed that sublimation was a solution to this problem.
The word sublimation has etymological roots in the Latin verb sublimare, which means “to lift up”, “to elevate” or “to exalt”. In the Middle Ages, alchemists used this word for the process of taking a base material, like mercury or raw sulfur, and heating it up at high temperatures to turn it into a pure gas or vapor. It was Nietzsche, however, who gave the word sublimation its modern connotation by putting a psychological spin on the alchemists’ use of the term. Our animal drives are the base psychological material. Psychological sublimation is the process by which we harness the energy contained within this material, channel it from its natural course, and put it to use for higher, purer, and life-promoting ends.
The use of sublimation is rare in the modern day, and so before exploring it in more detail, we will look at the maladaptive strategies that most people use to control their animal side.
Foremost among these is denial. Many people repress their anger or deny the lust that accompanies their sex drive. Others pretend they have no drive for power or that they are completely free of greed, envy, or jealousy. The denial of the base drives, or their associated emotions, has long been central to Western moral systems. Christianity, for example, sometimes brands these passions as impure and immoral. Nietzsche described this tendency toward denial as a form of castration because it severs our connection to vital forces that make us vigorous, powerful, and fully alive.
“To attack the passions at their roots means to attack life at its roots…”
(Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols)
And as he writes elsewhere:
“To exterminate the passions and desires merely in order to do away with their folly and its unpleasant consequences – this itself seems to us today merely an acute form of folly… The church combats the passions with excision in every sense of the word: its ‘cure’ is castration…It has at all times laid the emphasis of its discipline on extirpation.”
(Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols)
Another way of restraining the animal within is to numb ourselves to its presence with addictions and distractions. Illicit drugs, psychotropics, and alcohol can keep these passions at bay. While compulsive technology use, by disembodying us, keeps us unaware of the physical expression of these drives.
Some people, however, don’t deny these drives but express them in unhealthy ways. They take what can be called a cowardly approach and seek outlets for these passions in simulated environments or in the realm of fantasy. Pornography for a sex drive, video games for aggression, social media for anger – the digital world offers countless outlets to satisfy our base drives without inhibition or fear of severe consequences.
