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PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY
young girls and women in his vicinity. He merely fell in love
when the occasion was ripe for it. It was not that certain
women had it in themselves to arouse Goethe’s power to write.
On the contrary, it was the already existing poetical disposition
of his soul that caused him to love the women who
happened to come within his ken while the creative power was
astir.
The physical occurrence—which must, of course, be taken
into account—never explains things as subtle as poetry and
artistic creation, and provides no proof at all that any elevation
of instinctual energies has occurred. Manifestations in mental
life of chemical changes in the blood, caused in their turn by
increased glandular activity, do not imply a conversion of any
specific psycho-sexual energy. We know that in an ageing
‘individual the withering away of the glands that produce the
sperm of the male may temporarily intensify the sexual urge
and reactivate the physical and mental powers. But this process
is a form of biological compensation and has nothing in common
with what is meant by the psychological term sublimation. No
transfer of a lower urge to a higher form has been accomplished.
Kretschmer is certainly right in seeing that the same biological
cause—an increase of vitality due to hormone activity—is
behind both the love affairs of Goethe and his poetry.
Sublimation and the Care of Souls
In pastoral teaching the theory of sublimation has been
accepted somewhat uncritically in recent years. The expression
itself has been used in many different senses that have obscured
its meaning. Hollington, an American clergyman and skilled
psychologist, sees in sublimation a process by which we educate
our instincts and control our impulses. Good morals and habits
are, for him, some results of sublimation. However, he also says
that modern man has a surplus of energy to deal with. Faced
with this fact, he can deal with it in several ways: he can live at
the bidding of his instincts, using their energy in the most direct
way; he can distort the energies by giving them abnormal
outlets, by repressing them into the unconscious; he can
discipline them so that his life is kept within the bounds of conven-
1 Psychology Serving Religion, New York, 1938.
212
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