This thesis proposes an investigation about the concepts of sublimation and idealization in psychoanalysis, in order to verify the hypothesis that both participate in the constitution of culture. Thus we suggest that, in the Freud s text, culture is conceived as a response to the inexorable condition of helplessness and that its constitution depends upon the renunciation of instinctual satisfaction. Although sublimation is the instinctual vicissitude that is traditionally associated with the construction of culture, we propose that idealization also participates in this process. Both sublimation and idealization comply with the instinctual renunciation required by culture, but while sublimation renounces to the initial aims of the drive through desexualization, idealization only inhibits the original aim of the instinct. Finally, we suggest that the dynamics of contemporary society allow for the hipotesis of, on one hand, a decrease in sublimatory activity and, in the other hand, an increase of idealization.