Sigmund Freud and James Putnam: Friendship as a Form of Sublimation

This article focuses on Freud’s lectures at Clark University in 1909 and the correspondence that followed from Freud’s visit to America with the Boston neurologist James Jackson Putnam. Particular emphasis is given to the concept of sublimation, specifically to Putnam’s desire to make sublimation a goal of psychoanalysis and his view that sublimations should reflect the individual’s recognition of the interests of the community or desire for an ideal community. Against Putnam, we endorse Freud’s view that sublimation should not be a goal of psychoanalysis. However, we support Putnam’s emphasis on the social value of sublimations, but in a more limited sense than he proposes in his correspondence with Freud. We suggest that the correspondence between Putnam and Freud reflects the very fact that the lifting of sexual repressions makes possible the development of male friendships. Thus, we view the correspondence between Freud and Putnam as an instance of sublimation, and suggest that the friendship that this correspondence reflected and nurtured is an example of the ideal community to which we humans aspire but which often remains elusive and unrealized.