Melanie Klein, “The Importance of Symbol-Formation in the Development of the Ego” (1930) (XIII)
We have now reviewed some of the background to Klein’s use of phrases like “talent and sublimation." This background is contained in “Infant Analysis” (1923), the text to which Klein briefly refers, without elaboration, in “Symbol-Formation.” In this earlier essay, at least, Klein spoke the idiom of “libidinal cathexis” — the unconscious investment of “superfluous libido” in so-called “ego-tendencies.” This mechanism broadly explains our interest in certain movements, faculties, activities, and projects, as well as our capacities in each of these areas. This libido, and more specifically the “pleasurable situations” (98) from infancy unconsciously structuring this libido, “provide the ego-tendency with the sum of affect which acts as the stimulus and driving force of talent” (98). The term “ego tendency,” we saw, ranges everything from “the earliest movements and games of motion” (111), to “the function of nutrition” (115), to “art or…creative talent” (99). (This is a conceptual refinement, it seems to me, of the comparatively undeveloped notions of Freud’s original drive theory, where sublimation designates simple “aim deflected” libido — say, in “Character and Anal Erotism.”)
By the same token, however, as Klein further underlines in “Infant Analysis,” any inhibitions encumbering this superfluous libido may likewise affect these ego-tendencies. In other words, an ego-tendency may itself become inhibited. In this respect, “the development of the ego-tendency must also depend on the fate of the libido with which it is associated, that is to say, on the success of the libidinal cathexis” (94). And again, in words that take us directly to our theme in this entry, Klein suggests that the “displacement of inhibition or anxiety from one group of ego-tendencies to another” is enabled by the “cathexis of a sexual-symbolic character…common to both groups” (92).
This last line — “cathexis of a sexual-symbolic character” — brings us to the second part of Klein’s argument, which I’ve essentially bracketed until now. For Klein’s full position, on which she will build years later in “Symbol-Formation,” is that sublimation and talent — the general ingredients and mechanisms of which are now in view — are themselves grounded, as explananda, in a particular foundation, the explanans of symbolic equation. To consider once more the passage from “Symbol-Formation” we’ve been investigating:
“Some years ago I wrote a paper…in which I drew the conclusion that symbolism is the foundation of all sublimation and of every talent, since it is by way of symbolic equation that things, activities and interests become the subject of libidinal phantasies.” (220, my italics)
How in “Infant Analysis” does Klein concretize what appears in 1930 as a rather abstract, undeveloped assertion? First, again, the explananda:
“While we accept as valid the differentiation between ego-instincts and sexual instincts…some part of the sexual instincts remains throughout life associated with the ego-instincts and furnishes them with libidinal components.” (95)
And now, in the next lines, the explanans:
“[T]he sexual-symbolic cathexis of a trend or activity belonging to the ego-instincts corresponds to this libidinal component. We call this process of cathexis with libido ‘sublimation’ and explain its genesis by saying that it gives to superfluous libido, for which there is no adequate satisfaction, the possibility of discharge, and that the damming-up of libido is thus lessened or brought to an end.” (95, my italics)
This, finally, is the missing item in Klein’s account: only by virtue of the “sexual-symbolic cathexis of a trend or activity belonging to the ego-instincts” do ego-tendencies become amenable to the sort of investment, hence “discharge,” definitive of “sublimation.” Klein makes the point a moment later in a slightly different form:
“[S]ymbol-formation…affords an opportunity for libido to be displaced on to other objects and activities of the self-preservative instincts, not originally possessing a pleasurable tone. Here we arrive at the mechanism of sublimation.” (96, my italics)
And again:
“sublimation…takes place by way of symbol-formation, libidinal phantasies becoming fixated in sexual-symbolic fashion upon particular objects, activities and interests” (96, my italics)
We said above that the “pleasurable situations” from infancy, unconsciously structuring libido, “provide the ego-tendency with the sum of affect which acts as the stimulus and driving force of talent.” But these early pleasurable situations possess a certain structure — quintessentially a structure belonging to a specific Oedipal fantasy. And what Klein has designated the “sexual-symbolic cathexis of a trend or activity belonging to the ego-instincts” is precisely the mechanism which affixes the libido of this fantasy to the “particular objects, activities and interests” that share that fantasy’s original structure. (We might say that, from the unconscious standpoint, the ego-tendency in question — the object, activity, or interest — simply is the phanatasied object.) Klein provides the following illustrations:
“In the cases I have mentioned of pleasure in motion — games and athletic activities — we could recognize the influence of the sexual-symbolic meaning of the playing-field, the road, etc. (symbolizing the mother), while walking, running, and athletic movements of all kinds stood for penetrating into the mother. At the same time, the feet, the hands and the body, which carry out these activities and in consequence of early identification are equated with the penis, served to attract to themselves some of the phantasies which really had to do with the penis and the situations of gratification associated with that organ. The connecting-link was probably pleasure in motion or rather organ-pleasure in itself.” (96, my italics)
These illustrations speak for themselves and I won’t belabor Klein’s point. I would, however, draw attention to a trope here that establishes a basic continuity between “Infant Analysis” and “Symbol-Formation” that might otherwise be lost among the intervening changes to Klein’s position. I’d like, that is, to underscore the importance of the mother, and specifically the mother’s body, as one crucial phantasied object — one unconsciously re-experienced in those items with which it has been symbolically equated. It is above all this object, finally, which exploits the “sexual-symbolic cathexis of a trend or activity belonging to the ego-instincts” — in order unconsciously to win a second life for itself.