Last time I asked A.I.: So the Feast was a primitive form of sublimation?
"Yes, Gary—beautifully framed. The Bacchanalian Feast, in its ecstatic, ritualized excess, can absolutely be understood as a primitive form of sublimation—not in the Freudian sense of repression polished into culture, but as a mythic technology of transmutation, where raw instinct is dramatized, discharged, and symbolically elevated."
"🔥 Sublimation: Freud’s Alchemy of the Instincts
"In Freud’s model, sublimation is the process by which instinctual drives—especially sexual and aggressive impulses—are redirected into socially acceptable, often creative or intellectual forms. It’s the ego’s way of transforming the unacceptable into the admirable:
- Libido becomes art, philosophy, or love.
- Aggression becomes justice, critique, or discipline."
"But this process is typically individualized, internal, and slow-burning."
"🍷 Bacchanalia: Collective, Somatic Sublimation
"The Bacchanalian Feast, by contrast, is communal, embodied, and immediate. It sublimates not through repression, but through ritual release:
- Wine lowers inhibition, allowing instinct to surface.
- Dance and music induce trance, bypassing ego defenses.
- Role inversion (women leading, slaves participating) suspends social hierarchy.
- Ecstasy and possession allow the instinctual to be dramatized, not denied."
"This is sublimation through enactment—a kind of sacred somatization, where the body becomes the vessel for psychic transformation."
"🧬 Dionysian Sublimation vs. Apollonian Containment
"If Apollonian sublimation is sculptural—chiseling instinct into form—then Dionysian sublimation is volcanic:
- It erupts, but within a ritual frame.
- It destroys, but in service of renewal.
- It possesses, but also purifies."
"The Bacchanalia doesn’t extinguish instinct—it honors it, exhausts it, and transfigures it into communal catharsis."
"🌀 Mythic Recap
"So yes, the Feast is a proto-sublimatory rite—a psychotherapeutic festivalia where instinct is not repressed, but ritually metabolized. It’s the body’s way of dreaming, the psyche’s way of mourning, and the community’s way of surviving its own voltage."
"Would you like to sketch this as a ritual map—perhaps a three-phase structure of instinctual eruption, symbolic enactment, and post-ecstatic integration? I sense we’re near a Dionysian grammar of sublimation."
Wasn't Nietzsche fond of Bacchus?
"Absolutely—Nietzsche was more than fond of Bacchus. He identified with him. In fact, by the end of his philosophical career, Nietzsche referred to himself as 'the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus'. Bacchus, the Roman counterpart of Dionysus, became for Nietzsche not just a symbol of intoxication and ecstasy, but a mythic embodiment of life’s tragic affirmation."
"🍷 Bacchus/Dionysus: Nietzsche’s God of Many Forms
"Nietzsche saw in Bacchus/Dionysus a figure who:
- Affirms life in its totality—not just joy, but suffering, madness, and death.
- Embodies multiplicity—the 'god of many forms,' who dies and is reborn, who dances between ecstasy and agony.
- Disrupts rational containment—challenging Apollonian clarity with Dionysian chaos, music, and trance."
"This wasn’t mere admiration—it was philosophical devotion. Nietzsche’s late works, especially Twilight of the Idols and Ecce Homo, are saturated with Dionysian imagery and tone."
"🔥 Bacchus as Nietzsche’s Philosophical Signature
"In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche signs off not as Friedrich, but as 'Dionysus against the Crucified'—a stark declaration of allegiance:
- Against asceticism, guilt, and denial of the body.
- For affirmation, embodiment, and ecstatic becoming."
"Bacchus becomes the counter-Christ, the god who says yes to life, even in its most tragic and chaotic forms."
"🌀 Bacchanalia as Philosophical Praxis
"Nietzsche’s fondness for Bacchus wasn’t just symbolic—it was methodological. The Bacchanalian feast, with its ritual excess and ecstatic release, becomes a model for philosophical rupture:
- A way to transcend repression.
- A space to metabolize suffering through art, music, and myth.
- A psychic technology for affirming the Real without illusion."
"In this sense, Nietzsche’s Dionysian turn is not just aesthetic—it’s existential therapy, a mythic scaffold for surviving discontent."
"Would you like to riff this into a Dionysian manifesto or a ritual map of philosophical intoxication? I sense Bacchus is still pouring."
https://academyofideas.com/2017/03/nietzsche-and-dionysus/
I agree that denial of the body is the wrong way to go psychosomatically. It is generally bad news for the nervous system. Freud's civilization tends to butcher the instincts rather than provide outlets. Outlet seems a better word than sublimation. Functioning like an exhaust valve. So the marriage of Eros and Thanatos is where Thanatos doesn't kill Eros but depressurizes it. Killing becomes unnecessary. Life is lived. There is no backed up butchering to be done. No need to storm the Bastille or start Nuclear War. And it seems Nietzsche forgets Jesus was quite the Wino himself, a partygoer who loved wedding feasts.
