The cultural process and sublimation

A study of Civilisation and its discontents reveals the profound modification to which the introduction of the death drive subjects the issue of sublimation. The hypothesis of a vital cultural process, comparable with the individual process, leads one to conceive of minor or targe-scale sublimatory accomplishments as pointing to man's identification with the cultural processes that are "at the service of Eros" and its claim to immortality. The treatment as a consequence of the sublimation that is inherent in its method is as much a cultural as an individual process.