The Splendor of Creation: Kant, Nietzsche, Lacan
Alenka Zupančič 1999 UMBRA
When, in The Four Fundamental Concepts, Lacan returns to the question of the drive, he reformulates the difference between the object and the Thing in terms of the difference between aim and goal.
Let us suggest an example of this difference, as well as of the difference between instinct and drive: the child’s instinct to suck the nipple in order to be fed becomes the drive when the aim (or the object) of sucking is no longer milk, but the very satisfaction that it finds in sucking.
Thus, a child sucking its finger already has some experience of the drive.
The “change of object” that characterizes the drive, as well as sublimation, is the shift from the object that gives us satisfaction (i.e. the “natural” object, the object that can satisfy a certain need) to the satisfaction itself as an object.
We are not dealing with substitution, but rather with a “deviation” or “detour.” 57
So, contrary to the common belief, sublimation does not proceed from some “unnatural,” “depraved,” or “unacceptable” desire to something more “natural” (in the sense of being more acceptable), but rather from something perfectly natural (sucking a nipple in order to be fed) to something “unnatural” (sucking a woman’s breast or a penis for the sake of sucking, for the very pleasure of sucking).