According to Sigmund Freud, if rationality and society are to survive, irrational and antisocial drives such as sexuality and aggression must be controlled. They can be channeled or "sublimated" in socially acceptable forms of creativity and higher culture such as art, religion, philosophy, law, science, or morality, but even so they still threaten rationality and society.
Some people such as "neurotics" deal with the world by pretending that it is other than what they really experience, but they do not deny that there is a reality that might be different from what they experience.
Art tries not only to deny reality but also attempts to replace reality. In this respect, art is amazingly similar to insanity. Art is the means by which we experience the pleasure of unresolved or repressed irrational antisocial impulses. But like Plato, Freud thinks that art is not a rational response to the demands of reality. Rather, art is only the way of avoiding violence or other socially disruptive activity.
