Freud, “Character and Anal Erotism” (1908) (III)

Freud has argued that “obstinacy” is something like a “prolongation” into adulthood of the infant’s preoccupation with the anal zone, while his needs for cleanliness and order are “reaction-formations” against that same preoccupation. But he mentions a third possibility, as we saw in the last entry:

“the permanent character-traits are either unchanged prolongations [unveränderte Fortsetzungen] of the original instincts [ursprünglichen Triebe], or sublimations [Sublimierungen] of those instincts, or reaction-formations [Reaktionsbildurigen] against them.” (175)

We may now ask: which aspects of the anal character merit the label “sublimation?” What, in fact, does Freud mean by this term at this stage of his intellectual development?

As it happens, Freud’s use of the concept “sublimation” complicates somewhat the account I gave in the last entry. On the one hand, as we’ve seen, the paper’s concluding formula posits sublimation as a distinct process, midway between the prolongation of a drive, and a reaction-formation against it — again, traits are “either unchanged prolongations of the original instincts, or sublimations of those instincts, or reaction-formations against them.” Yet on the other hand, both in “Character and Anal Erotism” and Three Essays, Freud indicates that “sublimation” is, not a distinct process alongside those of “prolongation” and “reaction-formation,” but something like a fundamental mechanism at the basis of both of these. Freud uses the expression in this way, for example, in the following summary statement:

“It is…plausible to suppose that these character-traits of orderliness, parsimony and obstinacy, which are so often prominent in people who were formerly anal erotics, are to be regarded as the first and most constant results of the sublimation of anal erotism.” (171, my italics)

In other words, “sublimation” enjoys a logical priority: adult character-traits are all — whatever their ultimate form — “results” of sublimation.

What is sublimation, then? Freud consistently describes it in terms of a drive’s aim-deflection. (In other places, he adds object-deflection.) So Freud claims that “only a part” of the sexual drive “is made use of in sexual life; another part is deflected from sexual aims and directed towards others — a process which deserves the name of ‘sublimation’ [Sublimierung]” (171). And in Three Essays, again in nearly identical language:

“Historians of civilization appear to be at one in assuming that powerful components are acquired for every kind of cultural achievement by this diversion of sexual instinctual forces from sexual aims and their direction to new ones—a process which deserves the name of ‘sublimation.’” (178)

Broadly speaking, then, a drive has been “sublimated” when its original “aim” is displaced by another one. In the context of Freud’s article, we may say that the original sexual “aim” consisted in the infant’s concrete, pleasure-yielding activities around the anal zone. But the same sexual drive that powered these infantile activities is subsequently deflected towards another set of “aims,” which presumably embrace the anal character’s whole form-of-life. Both his moment-to-moment “activities” — e.g. scrubbing the kitchen and calculating expenses — and his basic moral orientation are then manifestations of this same drive, in “sublimated” form.

If this is correct, however, and all character traits are products of sublimation, then we must amend somewhat our comments in the last entry on “reaction-formations.” For when we spoke of the anal type’s “orderliness” as a reaction-formation, we implied that this trait sprung from a source beyond or outside the sexual drive itself. This seemed like the most reasonable interpretation of Freud’s own characterizations — for example, his suggestion that reaction-formations “rise like dams to oppose the later activity of the sexual instincts,” or that they are “built up…mental forces which are later to impede the course of the sexual instinct and, like dams, restrict its flow.” The “dam” metaphor clearly presents reaction-formations as prohibitive structures that are externally imposed on the sexual drives, which are then compelled to find other, more permissible outlets — precisely new “aims.”

Yet if orderliness is itself the result of sublimation, as Freud now explicitly asserts, then the image of “externality” cannot be quite accurate. In fact, we must infer that reaction-formations such as orderliness are not simply independent structures imposed, externally, on the sexual drive; they are precisely expressions or embodiments of that same sexual drive. Freud’s occasionally ambiguous phrases permit this reading. For example, he writes that “reaction-formations, or counter-forces…are actually formed at the expense of [auf Kosten] the excitations proceeding from the erotogenic zones” (171). And in Three Essays, too, we are told that reaction-formations “probably emerge at the cost [auf Kosten] of the infantile sexual impulses themselves” (178). It seems to me that, in the context of Freud’s account, the phrase “at the expense of” admits of two interpretations. It may simply mean that the reaction-formations dominate the sexual drives, or triumph "at the cost of” the drives’ defeat. (So we commonly speak of someone having fun at someone else’s expense.) Yet the phrase may also mean something like “drawing its strength from.” In other words, we may say that reaction-formations arise “at the expense” of the sexual drives because they expend or plunder the “energy” of those drives for its own purposes.

In the Three Essays, Freud construes the sexual drives as just such fungible quantities of “energy,” to be mobilized as required: “the activity of those [sexual] impulses does not cease even during this period of latency, though their energy is diverted, wholly or in great part, from their sexual use and directed to other ends” (178, my italics). In “Character and Anal Erotism,” likewise, Freud speaks of an “earlier impulsion…in the process of losing its aim…carried over to the newly emerging aim” (175). I think that this, finally, is what Freud has in mind when he accounts for the emergence of a trait like “orderliness” in the mechanism of “sublimation.” For while it is true that the anal character’s cleanliness is a reaction-formation against the sexual drive’s original form — “unseemly" pleasure in the anal zone’s — nevertheless, this trait is also a highly disguised objectification of that same drive. Hence all of the “interest” and “pleasure” taken by the anal type in cleanliness itself.