Sublimation
Sublimation is the transfer of an unacceptable impulse or urge into a more socially acceptable and often constructive alternative activity. It is closely related to displacement, but carries a more positive connotation, since the redirected energy is channelled into something genuinely valued, whether creative, intellectual, or socially useful, rather than simply discharged elsewhere.
Illustration
A man with a history of intense, difficult-to-manage anger throws himself instead into competitive long-distance running, channelling what he describes as the same restless intensity into training, and finds that the more consumed he becomes by the sport, the less that anger seems to surface elsewhere in his life.
References
- Casey, P. & Kelly, B. (2019). Fish's Clinical Psychopathology, 4th ed. Appendix II, 'Defences and Distortions'.