Sublimation

Literary/ Cultural Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)
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  • The Literary Encyclopedia. WORLD HISTORY AND IDEAS: A CROSS-CULTURAL VOLUME.

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Sublimation is a term which most literary readers encounter through work influenced by Freudian psychoanalytic interpretation, but it is helpful to know that the term came to Freud from physical chemistry where sublimation names the process of phase-change from a solid to a gaseous state without passing through the intermediate state of liquidity. Experiments demonstrating sublimation often involve heating a solid (such as frozen Carbon Dioxide or Ammonium Chloride) which does not apparently liquefy but turns directly to a gas, then cooling the gas so that the solid reappears, again without passing through the liquid phase.

Freud first uses the term in his paper “ ‘Civilised’ Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness” in 1908 to explain how certain human activities are an

242 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Sublimation". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 06 May 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1069, accessed 19 March 2024.]

1069 Sublimation 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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