Acting Out [1]

Of all the concepts with which Freud constructed psychoanalysis, probably none was more discussed over time than acting out. The difference between neurotic act and acting out rightly worries Fenichel in his essay of 1945, to which analysts all return to calibrate their theoretical instrument. Freud uses the verb agieren for the first time to characterize the neurotic conduct of the analysand in the "Postscript" to "Dora", where he says that "Thus she acted out an essential part of her recollections and phantasies instead of reproducing it in the treatment". Freud clearly contrasts acting out with the memories and fantasies that are reproduced in the cure. The relation between memory and repetition becomes much more subtle and complex. As in the case of perversion, the diagnosis of acting out cannot be done phenomenologically but only in metapsychological terms. Freud compare the terms "acting out" and "transference". The transference goes towards the object; the acting out distances itself from the object.