Sublimation

Ideas in Psychoanalysis is a series of essays which explain psychoanalytical concepts, their relevance to everyday life and their ability to illuminate the nature of human society and culture.

Unlike other beasts of the garden, human beings learn to control their sexual and aggressive motions; to distinguish between parents, sexual partners and friends; to acquire a sense of the beautiful, and we call this 'civilisation'.

Singh explains how we have developed these capacities - and argues for a sense of the moral sublime as the zenith of human development.