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Also known as Sublimierung

Redirecting a drive toward socially valued aims.

Sigmund Freud 1905 In the Three Essays Freud names sublimation as the diversion of sexual drive energy from sexual aims to other, culturally valued ones. It begins in the latency period, and Freud makes it a source of artistic activity and of character.

Idealization 1914 Freud separates the two: sublimation turns the drive toward a non-sexual aim, while idealization exalts the object without changing it. The ego ideal demands sublimation but cannot enforce it, so a lofty ideal is no proof that sublimation has succeeded.

Heinz Hartmann 1955 Hartmann recasts sublimation in the terms of ego psychology. It becomes a change in the mode of drive energy, from instinctual to non-instinctual, which supplies the ego with energy for its functions. He folds it into a wider neutralization that works on aggression as well as on libido and comes in degrees.
Jacques Lacan 1960 In the seminar of 1959–1960 Lacan moves sublimation away from a change of the drive's aim toward the place of the object. Sublimation raises an ordinary object to the dignity of the Thing, the lost and inaccessible das Ding, and art is organised around the void the Thing leaves.