Acting out
| French: acting out |
Acting Out (Agieren)
The concept of acting out (from Freud's German Agieren, French passage à l'acte in some early literature, though Lacanian theory later differentiates these concepts) occupies a central place in psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice.[1] Acting out refers to impulsive, dramatic, or otherwise expressive behaviors and gestures enacted by the analysand—usually within the context of the transference—which serve to convey unconscious material that cannot be directly verbalized.[2] The term "acting out" is used in the Standard Edition to translate Freud's Agieren, highlighting a fundamental feature of resistance in analysis: instead of remembering repressed material, the patient "acts it out" in the analytic relationship.
Etymology and Conceptual Background
Freudian Origins
Freud first articulated the concept of acting out in his 1914 essay "Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through," where he distinguishes between "remembering" and "acting out" as contrasting ways of bringing the past into the present.[3][2] In the course of analysis, patients unconsciously repeat their repressed conflicts, not as recollection but as enacted behavior.
"The patient does not remember anything of what he has forgotten and repressed, but acts it out. He reproduces it not as a memory, but as an action; he repeats it, without, of course, knowing that he is repeating it."[3]
If past events are repressed from memory, they return in the present by expressing themselves in actions; when the subject does not remember the past, therefore, he is condemned to repeat it by acting out. Freud thus describes acting out as a kind of compulsive repetition that expresses what cannot yet be integrated or symbolized as memory. He observes that the patient will tend to "act out" what they cannot recall, repeating aspects of the past in the present analytic situation. Acting out is thus a sign of resistance, yet it also makes the unconscious visible for analytic work.
The aim of psychoanalytic treatment is to help the patient move from acting out to remembering, thereby breaking the cycle of repetition and enabling working-through (Durcharbeitung).
Case of Dora
Freud's initial recognition of acting out emerged from his treatment of Dora, where he belatedly understood that her abrupt departure from analysis and her dramatic confrontations exemplified acting out—enacting her unconscious ambivalence toward her father, Herr K, and Freud himself within the transference relationship.[4]
Lacanian Reformulation
The Dimension of the Other
From a Lacanian perspective, Freud's definition is accurate but incomplete; it neglects the crucial dimension of the Other.[1] According to Lacan, acting out especially arises when recollection is prevented not merely by repression but also by a rupture in communication with the Other. Recollection is not a solitary act of consciousness but an intersubjective event: it depends on the possibility of being heard by another.
When the Other—the analyst or another significant figure—has become "deaf" or unresponsive, the subject cannot deliver a message verbally. Forced into a position where language fails, the subject is compelled to convey something through action. Acting out is thus conceived as a ciphered message addressed to the Other: the subject is not consciously aware of the content or even the fact that their actions have this communicative dimension, but it is the Other's task to decipher this message, even if the act resists full interpretation.[5]
Wild Transference
Jacques Lacan sharpens the distinction between acting out, passage to the act, and the act proper. For Lacan, acting out is always fundamentally addressed to the Other (the analyst or a symbolic authority): it is a staged communication or demonstration on the "scene" of analysis or social life.[5][6]
Lacan characterizes acting out as a form of "wild transference" (transfert sauvage)—behavior that dramatizes the presence of unconscious desire but resists clear symbolic interpretation.[6] This "wild" quality indicates that acting out occurs outside the properly established frame of analytic transference, yet it nonetheless appeals to the Other for recognition and interpretation.
Theatrical Structure
The structure of acting out is fundamentally theatrical: the analysand "makes a scene" on the symbolic stage, often demonstrating (rather than speaking) an aspect of unconscious conflict.[6] This staging distinguishes acting out from both the symptom (which is not addressed to the Other, but expresses unconscious compromise) and from passage à l'acte, which marks a catastrophic exit from the symbolic order altogether.
As one commentator observes, "Acting out is when a spectator jumps onto the stage" to make a demonstration, whereas passage to the act is "when an actor jumps from the stage into the audience," exiting the scene entirely.[6]
Structural Characteristics
Address to the Other
Acting out is always staged for an audience—often the analyst, under the structure of transference. It occurs not in isolation, but as a communication across a disrupted symbolic field. Unlike passage to the act, acting out always presupposes an audience or addressee. It maintains the subject's position within the symbolic or imaginary order, however precariously.
Solicits but Resists Interpretation
The subject's action is often a way of making visible a kernel of unconscious desire or fantasy. Although analytic interpretation may have limited efficacy while the underlying conflict remains unresolved, acting out nonetheless "calls for interpretation" by making visible the disavowed kernel of fantasy or desire.[5]
A double paradox emerges: formations of the unconscious (symptoms, dreams, parapraxes) do not appeal to interpretation—"the dream does not want to say anything to anyone"—yet they nonetheless respond to interpretation. Acting out, however, "does call for interpretation, if only because it is addressed to an Other, yet analytic interpretation has no effect on it."[6]
Maintains the Scene
Rather than exiting the symbolic stage (as in passage to the act), acting out dramatizes a crisis or impasse. It is theatrical, maintaining and often intensifying tension within the analytic or social scene. Acting out escalates the situation that cannot be put into words, but it does not dissolve the stage itself.
The Matrix of Anxiety and Acting Out
In Seminar X, Lacan positions acting out within his conceptual matrix of anxiety, situating it between "turmoil" (émoi) and "anxiety" on the axis of movement, and at the end of a column comprising "impediment" and the "symptom" on the axis of difficulty.[5][6]
Acting out stems from the synergetic operation of two conditions:
- Impediment ('empêchement'): narcissistic entrapment, being caught in a trap conditioned by the subject's narcissism
- Turmoil ('émoi'): "trouble and the fall of might" (chute de puissance), occurring owing to a lack of available signifiers—a "too little" share of symbolic elements
When these coordinates converge—when the subject experiences both narcissistic blow (losing face) and radical disempowerment (for want of words/signifiers)—acting out emerges as a response. Instead of entering a state of anxiety, the subject has recourse to acting out, which serves to retain composure whilst demonstrating how the Other has made a crucial mistake.[6]
Classical and Clinical Examples
Freud's Dora
Dora's confrontations in psychoanalysis, including her slap on Herr K's face and her abrupt departure from Freud's treatment, exemplify acting out as the manifestation of unconscious conflict enacted toward significant figures in the transference.[4] Lacan later identified Dora's sudden goodbye to Freud—"saying goodbye very warmly, with the heartiest wishes for the New Year," then never returning—as demonstrating how acting out can escalate into passage to the act.[6]
The "Fresh Brains Man"
In Lacan's reading of Ernst Kris's patient, the subject's fixation on eating "fresh brains" serves as a literal demonstration of the unassimilable object-cause of desire—a staged act revealing to the analyst the limits of interpretation.[6] After Kris's intervention (telling the patient he does not actually plagiarize), the patient leaves the session and seeks out restaurants serving fresh brains, then reports this act in the next session.
Lacan interprets this as: "Everything you tell me is true, simply that does not touch the question—there remains the fresh brains."[6] The acting out brings the object a onto the stage "on a platter," demonstrating what the analyst has missed while maintaining the transferential scene.
The Young Homosexual Woman
Freud's young homosexual woman engaged in public courtship of an aristocratic lady—an elaborate acting out addressing her father. Lacan characterized these "amorous adventures" as typical examples of acting out, demonstrating that acting out can become unbearable and precipitate passage to the act (her suicide attempt).[6]
Clinical Implications
Challenge for Analysts
Acting out is often experienced as challenging, frustrating, or even threatening by clinicians.[6] Freud and Lacan both warn that acting out may be exacerbated, or rendered unmanageable, by technical errors—such as:
- Abandoning the analytic position for a psycho-educational approach
- Responding with prohibition or interdiction
- Failing to recognize the transference structure
- Identifying with the "supposed subject of knowing" (sujet supposé savoir)
When the analyst abandons the analytic discourse for the "discourse of the master" (issuing commands) or "discourse of the university" (imposing knowledge), acting out is likely to intensify or potentially escalate into passage to the act.[6]
Working-Through
Analytic work attempts to "curb acting out back onto a verbalisation of the patient's unconscious desire and subjective truth," creating a shift toward symbolic working-through.[6] This requires the analyst to maintain the position of semblance of object a, causing and sustaining the analysand's unconscious desire, so that the patient be given the space and time to become both the narrator and the author of their desire.
The analyst should allow the patient to avow their desire while simultaneously leading them to acknowledge that the object of this desire is "simply nothing"—the crucial difference captured in the distance between "You do not steal" (psycho-educational intervention) and "You steal nothing" (analytic interpretation).[6]
Response to Acting Out
Lacan reviewed three options suggested by Phyllis Greenacre for responding to acting out: interpretation, prohibition, and strengthening of the ego.[7] Lacan rejects ego-strengthening as fostering identification with the analyst. As for prohibition, instead of solving the problem, it is likely to precipitate, perpetuate, or exacerbate acting out, potentially contributing to its becoming unbearable and leading to more radical types of action or "eternalisation of the neurosis."[6]
The only viable alternative Lacan considered is for the acting out and the transference that supports it to be analyzed—that is, for it to be brought back into verbalization of the patient's unconscious desire and subjective truth.[6]
Distinction from Related Phenomena
Acting Out vs. Symptom
Unlike the symptom (which is not addressed to the Other, but expresses unconscious compromise formation), acting out is staged with (often unconscious) communicative intent. The symptom does not call for interpretation in the same way—it simply is. Acting out, by contrast, demonstrates something for the Other, even as it resists being fully decoded.
Acting Out vs. Passage to the Act
Passage to the act (passage à l'acte) involves a radical exit from the symbolic scene and cannot be addressed to the Other, while acting out remains staged for an audience and calls for (but may resist) interpretation.[5]
The distinction depends on structure: if the behavior is addressed to the Other (even if aggressively), it remains acting out—"wild transference" that calls for but resists interpretation. If it represents an exit from the scene of transference, it approaches passage à l'acte.
As Lacan emphasizes: whereas acting out constitutes a symbolic scene where the object a is served up in its material form, in passage à l'acte "the subject falls out of the symbolic altogether, and reduces itself to nothingness in its very identification with the object a."[6]
Acting Out vs. Impulsivity/Acting In
Not all impulsive or expressive behaviors constitute acting out. For Lacan, acting out must be situated within a transferential dynamic, with a symbolic or imaginary addressee. "Acting in" (behaviors observable within the session, like blushing, psychosomatic symptoms) differs from acting out primarily in conventions of clinical observation rather than structural difference—both represent forms of acting without full verbal mediation.
Acting Out vs. the Act Proper
The act, as theorized by Lacan and explicated in Slavoj Žižek's work, transforms the symbolic coordinates and changes the subject ("wiped out and born again"), whereas acting out demonstrates but does not transform the coordinates of desire.[8]
Acting out maintains the fantasy framework even while appearing to dramatize a break from it. The authentic act traverses the fantasy, restructuring the subject's libidinal economy, whereas acting out provides cathartic demonstration while leaving the underlying structure intact.
Extended Theoretical Applications
Žižek: Acting Out, Fantasy, and Ideology
Slavoj Žižek further develops the distinction between acting out and both passage to the act and the act proper.[9] For Žižek:
Acting out is often the subject's demonstration of a fantasy scene or symptom for the Other, drawing attention to what cannot be symbolized. In film and popular culture, acting out provides cathartic drama but leaves the underlying coordinates unchanged—contrasting with the rare act that truly transforms subject and situation.
Film Examples
Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver" (1976): Travis's attempt to assassinate the political candidate represents acting out—a staged demonstration addressed to Betsy (the campaign worker who rejected him). When this fails, his "rescue" of child prostitute Iris still functions as acting out rather than authentic act, since his fantasy structure remains intact and the media's transformation of him into a hero allows him to remain the same alienated subject.[9]
Other Examples: Žižek analyzes various film characters whose dramatic gestures constitute acting out rather than genuine transformation—providing spectacular catharsis without changing the fundamental symbolic coordinates that structure their desire and identity.
Political and Ideological Dimensions
Žižek's work reveals how acting out functions not only clinically but also politically and ideologically. Certain forms of protest, transgression, or resistance may constitute acting out—dramatic demonstrations that maintain rather than transform the system they appear to oppose. This distinguishes acting out from genuine political acts that restructure symbolic coordinates and create new political possibilities.
See Also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Dylan Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 1996), entry "Acting out".
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, The Language of Psycho-Analysis, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (London: Karnac, 1988), entry "Acting out".
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Sigmund Freud, "Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through" (1914), in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 12, pp. 145-156.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Sigmund Freud, "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria" (1905), in Standard Edition, vol. 7, pp. 1-122.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire, livre X: L'angoisse (1962–1963).
- ↑ 6.00 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 6.10 6.11 6.12 6.13 6.14 6.15 6.16 6.17 Dany Nobus, "When Acts Speak Louder Than Words: On Lacan's Theory of Action in Psychoanalytic Practice," Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 2016.
- ↑ Phyllis Greenacre, "General Problems of Acting Out," The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 19(4) (1950): 455-467.
- ↑ Slavoj Žižek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology (London: Verso, 1999).
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Slavoj Žižek, Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out, revised edition (New York: Routledge, 2001).