Acting out [2]

Some years before Fenichel's essay, Anna Freud dealt with the theme of acting out and transference in 'The Application of Analytic Technique to the Study of the Psychic Institutions". In this case, as in her entire book, Anna Freud lucidly applies the structural doctrine, trying to order the concepts in relation to theory and practice. Acting out can offer the analyst valuable knowledge about the patient, but it is not very useful for the course of the cure and "is even more difficult for the analyst to deal with than the transference of the various modes of defence". Thus, Anna Freud concludes: "It is natural that he should try to restrict it as far as possible by means of the analytic interpretations which he gives and the non-analytic prohibitions which he imposes". Transference and acting out are two indispensable theoretical terms, which Freud formulated without managing to solve all their enigmas.