(psychology) modifying the natural expression of an impulse or instinct (especially a sexual one) to one that is socially acceptable

Usage examples of sublimation.

Twins, every normal guy had thoughts about chastity and sublimation, and enjoyed them, too.

He was still very nearly a virgin as far as sublimation was concerned.

Art that with this girl the meaning of the act of sublimation was likely to be very great indeed.

Well, since an act of sublimation promised all the comfort of which he stood in need, why not?

But all the fleshly stirrings that he now managed to arouse in himself would only go as fuel for sublimation if he faltered.

A lot of the younger, more radical psychologists held that sexual repression, or all-out sublimation even, did no permanent harm when practiced occasionally.

Half a dozen small haloids had been towed into a tiny swarm, each mirror-armored to save it from sublimation.

And perhaps her rejection of love, her sublimation of desire, and her decision to view the life of her heart in terms of an emotional IRA, a long-term yuppie investment, choosing the security of what she could endure over the potentials of hopemaybe that was all of which she was capable.

This the obscure artist calls conjunction, sublimation, assation, extraction, putrefaction, ligation, desponsation, subtilization, generation, etc.

This is called sublimation or desorption, and the higher the temperature, the more thrust results.

Then, pious Eneas, conformant to thc fulminant firman which enjoins on the tremylose terrian that, when the call comes, he shall produce nichthemerically from his unheavenly body a no uncertain quantity of obscene matter not protected by copriright in the United Stars of Ourania or bedeed and bedood and bedang and bedung to him, with this double dye, brought to blood heat, gallic acid on iron ore, through the bowels of his misery, flashly, faithly, nastily, appropriately, this Esuan Menschavik and the first till last alshemist wrote over every square inch of the only foolscap available, his own body, till by its corrosive sublimation one continuous present tense integument slowly unfolded all marryvoising moodmoulded cyclewheeling history (thereby, he said, reflecting from his own individual person life unlivable, transaccidentated through the slow fires of .

Then, pious Eneas, conformant to thc fulminant firman which enjoins on the tremylose terrian that, when the call comes, he shall produce nichthemerically from his unheavenly body a no uncertain quantity of obscene matter not protected by copriright in the United Stars of Ourania or bedeed and bedood and bedang and bedung to him, with this double dye, brought to blood heat, gallic acid on iron ore, through the bowels of his misery, flashly, faithly, nastily, appropriately, this Esuan Menschavik and the first till last alshemist wrote over every square inch of the only foolscap available, his own body, till by its corrosive sublimation one continuous present tense integument slowly unfolded all marryvoising moodmoulded cyclewheeling history (thereby, he said, reflecting from his own individual person life unlivable, transaccidentated through the slow fires of consciousness into a dividual chaos, perilous, potent .

Indeed, with multiple screenwriters scrubbing the individuality from almost every project (thirty-six, I'm told, worked on the execrable Mission to Mars), an industry-wide aesthetic funded by a marketing sensibility, and the sublimation of character and story to special effects and high concept (a notion best expressed by the punchline to an old joke: She's the Pope, he's a chimp -- they're cops!

Countless centers of more-active gas sublimation had riddled the dusty plains, ripping free to join the high vacuum.

For Lydia held the not uncommon opinion that though, of course, a married man should spend a certain amount of his time assuring an income, beyond that there ought to be only one interest in his lifefrom which it followed that the existence of any other must be slightly insulting to his wife, since everybody knows that a hobby is really just a form of sublimation.