Sublimation and drives in sports: a psychoanalytic perspective

ABSTRACT

In continuation with my on-going research and presentations on sport as a field of channeling and externalizing cruelty and violence, as a field of transfiguration of drives, in this paper I will examine instincts, drives and sublimation in Freud and post-Freudian psychoanalytic literature within the context of sports. Freud was influenced by Nietzsche on his drive theory; however, in Freud it assumes a specific meaning and finds its place within the context of his overall psychoanalytic work, especially in relation to his second topology of the human psyche that consists of id, ego and superego and his theory of sublimation. Ultimately, Freud reduces all drives to Eros and Thanatos and explains their workings in relation to the constitution of the psyche. Sublimation has a direct correlation to drives, which is a culture/individual specific way of treating and channeling drives; sublimation also has much to do with suffering and how we deal with suffering (and other emotions as I discuss in my book, Emotion in Sports). What I would like to explore in this paper is to understand in what ways sport is a form of sublimation and how sport may address the subject of drives, both Eros and Thanatos. Since Freud sees both of these drives as bound together in many contexts, does sport constitute one of those areas? What type of psychic constitution does the sporting culture assume? Or, to put it differently, what are the dynamic relations of the different parts of the human psyche, the id, the ego and the superego, in the practice of sport and in the community of sports? Here and elsewhere, in agreement with Jung, I will include discussion of ‘collective unconscious’, as I explore the significance of symbols of sport in the life of individuals and cultures.

KEYWORDS:

• Eros
• Thanatos
• drive
• sublimation and transfiguration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In a talk at IAPS Conference (Fullerton, 2013), I explored this topic in-depth, published as ‘Power Relations in Sports’ in Academia.edu.

2. In TUNCEL (2018) I have explored this topic from different angles, benefiting from the ideas of several philosophers and sport philosophers.

3. In On the Genealogy of Morals, Second Essay, Nietzsche diagnoses ‘internalization’ of instincts, what is called ‘repression’ in psychoanalysis, as one of the fundamental illnesses of human civilization: ‘All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward—this is what I call the internalization of man: thus it was that man first developed what was later called his “soul”. The entire inner world, originally as thin as if it were stretched between two membranes, expanded and extended itself, acquired depth, breadth, and height, in the same measure as outward discharge was inhibited’. (1967, 84). Similar arguments are made in Daybreak, Aphorism 18, regarding cruelty, and the Dionysian that Nietzsche presents in The Birth of Tragedy has cruel traits that become manifest in arts and culture.

4. In his book, Sapiens, Harari also shows how aggressive and violent is our species. Although much of the early history of homo sapiens remains in obscurity, Harari’s speculations agree with introspective conclusions of many psychoanalysts including Freud and Adler.

5. In my TUNCEL (2013), I have shown how the ancient Greek culture invested in agonal institutions where such transfiguration could occur under the auspices of its heroes and gods.