Sigmund Freud, in his 1930 essay Civilization and Its Discontents , argues that the sublimation of sexual desire leads to the mental energy required for advances in civiliza- tion: science, art, politics, etc. In particular, he writes,
6182“Sublimation of instinct [including sexual instinct] is an especially conspicu- ous feature of cultural development; it is what makes it possible for higher psychical activities, scientific, artistic, or ideological, to play such an impor- tant part in civilized life...