Passage to the act

French: passage à l'acte

Passage to the Act (passage à l'acte)

The passage to the act (passage à l'acte in French) designates a radical breakdown wherein the subject exits the symbolic scene entirely, typically manifesting as sudden, apparently unmotivated violence, suicidality, or other extreme behavior that severs the subject's connection to symbolic mediation and the Other. Unlike acting-out (which addresses the Other and solicits interpretation) or the act proper (which restructures the symbolic coordinates), the passage to the act represents a catastrophic fall into the real, a Niederkommen (falling down, descent) where the subject becomes object, stripped of the signifier that normally maintains subjectivity.

Lacan systematically distinguishes the passage to the act in Seminar X (Anxiety, 1962–63), situating it as fundamentally different from both neurotic acting-out and the ethical act that characterizes analysis's end. The passage to the act involves a foreclosure or collapse of the symbolic order at the very moment of its maximum tension—when anxiety (the affect of the real) overwhelms the subject's capacity to maintain symbolic position. It cannot be directly interpreted because it occurs precisely where interpretation fails; it is irreducible to meaning and marks a fall out of the scene of discourse rather than a message within it.

The clinical significance of this concept is immense: the passage to the act represents one of the most dangerous clinical presentations, potentially involving suicide, homicide, or other forms of self-harm. Yet Lacan's theorization—echoed and extended by contemporary theorists like Jean Allouch and Slavoj Žižek—resists simple psychiatric categorization, insisting instead on a precise phenomenological and structural understanding of what constitutes passage to the act versus superficially similar phenomena like impulsive violence or desperate acting-out.

Etymology and Conceptual Background

Linguistic and Philosophical Origins

The term passage à l'acte literally translates as "passage to the act" or "transition to the act." The word passage suggests both a movement through something and an exit from something. The French acte derives from Latin actus but in this context carries the sense of a sudden, violent, or catastrophic doing—not the deliberate, ethical act (acte) that concludes analysis, but something far more primitive and terrifying.

The concept emerges particularly in late nineteenth-century French psychiatry and phenomenology, where terms like impulsion and passage à l'acte were used to describe sudden violent acts that appeared to lack rational motivation. However, Lacan's theorization moves beyond psychiatric description toward a psychoanalytic understanding rooted in the theory of the Symbolic Order and the Real.

French Psychiatric Antecedents

In nineteenth-century French psychiatry, particularly in the work of alienists and forensic psychiatrists, the passage à l'acte was recognized as a distinct clinical phenomenon—a sudden transition from psychological state to violent action that seemed to bypass consciousness and deliberation. The term appeared frequently in legal medicine and discussions of criminal responsibility, where it was used to describe acts that appeared unmotivated or incomprehensible.

By the early twentieth century, the concept had become standard in French clinical discourse. Yet it remained somewhat descriptive rather than theoretically grounded—a name for a phenomenon rather than an explanation of it. Lacan and, later, Allouch explicitly criticize this merely descriptive usage when the term comes to designate "any act whatsoever."

Within French psychoanalytic circles, passage à l'acte was commonly used as a translation for "acting out," which itself renders Freud's Agieren—a terminological confusion that Lacan's Seminar X explicitly sought to rectify.

Freudian Resonances and Divergences

While Sigmund Freud does not systematically theorize passage à l'acte as such, his concept of Agieren (acting-out) encompasses elements later separated by Lacan. Freud's discussion of the young homosexual woman's suicide attempt (1920)—where she threw herself over a railway embankment after a humiliating encounter with her father—is the crucial clinical event Lacan reinterprets. Freud treats this act within the framework of unconscious wish and guilt; Lacan will eventually read it as exemplary of the structural deadlock that can culminate in a passage to the act.

Freud's 1914 paper "Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through" establishes Agieren as the mode in which the analysand enacts what cannot yet be remembered, framing acting-out as a "repetition in the act" of what is repressed. Lacan initially tries to graft passage à l'acte onto this Freudian notion, but later, and more rigorously in Seminar X, he separates the two: acting-out remains within the field of transference and calls for interpretation, whereas passage to the act marks a fall outside the field of speech altogether.

Lacan draws on Freud's theorization of Anxiety (Angst) and the encounter with trauma, yet systematically refocuses these through his own framework. The passage to the act represents a particular kind of encounter with the real—not the regulated encounter of the act proper that restructures symbolic coordinates, but a catastrophic irruption of the real that dissolves symbolic position itself.

Phenomenological Dimensions

Existential phenomenology (Heidegger, Sartre) emphasizes freedom, choice, and the subject's responsibility for action. From this perspective, action is defined by consciousness, intention, and the subject's capacity to project possibilities. The passage to the act, by contrast, involves precisely a failure or suspension of this phenomenological structure of action. The subject does not choose; something happens. The subject does not project; something erupts.

This phenomenological failure becomes theoretically significant for Lacan: the passage to the act reveals something about the subject's constitution that ordinary action obscures—it reveals the possibility of non-choice, of action without consciousness, of the subject as object rather than agent.

Historical Development in Lacan's Teaching

Early Work and Clinical Encounters (1930s-1950s)

Lacan encounters the phenomenon of passage à l'acte early in his psychiatric career, particularly in his work at Sainte-Anne Hospital. His early case of Aïmée (Marguerite Pantaine-Anzieu), whom he presents as a case of "erotomania," involves an act of violence that he interprets through the lens of paranoid projection and imaginary identification. Yet even in these early writings, Lacan struggles to fit the phenomenon of violent passage into the categories available to him, suggesting an inchoate awareness that existing psychoanalytic theory proves inadequate.

In his work on the mirror stage (1936, revised 1949), Lacan's focus on imaginary captation and its dissolution provides groundwork for later theorization of passage à l'acte as involving a particular catastrophe of the imaginary. Until 1963, Lacan employed the term passage à l'acte exclusively in its ordinary psychiatric understanding—as sudden, uncontrollable outbursts of affective energy in the form of violence or aggression directed against oneself or another person.

Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959-60)

In S7, Lacan's reading of Sophocles' Antigone addresses a figure on the boundary between act and passage to the act. Antigone's decision to bury her brother violates Creon's law, yet it is not a passage à l'acte—it is an act of ethical assumption, staged in the space of the Other and tied to a position of desire. However, the seminar establishes themes crucial to understanding passage à l'acte: the encounter with das Ding (the Thing), the real, and the dissolving of the imaginary order; what Lacan calls "the zone of horror" beyond the beautiful. Passage to the act can be understood as a catastrophic rather than ethical encounter with this same zone.

Seminar X: Anxiety (1962-63)

S10 provides the systematic, definitive theorization of passage à l'acte. In the lessons devoted to anxiety and acting-out, Lacan elaborates the distinction between:

Agieren (acting-out)

Passage à l'acte (passage to the act)

L'acte (the act proper)

The passage à l'acte is characterized as:

An exit from the symbolic scene (sortie de la scène symbolique)

A fall or descent (Niederkommen in German, emphasizing both falling and giving birth in a negative sense)

A phenomenon where the subject becomes object and loses subjective position

An encounter with the real that dissolves rather than restructures the symbolic

A phenomenon that cannot be interpreted directly, because interpretation presupposes the symbolic field that passage to the act abandons

Lacan emphasizes that passage à l'acte involves the real in its most disruptive sense—not as external reality but as that which returns despite all symbolic defenses, as the point where the symbolic order collapses.

Seminar XI: Four Fundamental Concepts (1964)

S11 positions passage à l'acte within the broader framework of repetition and encounter with the real. The tuchē (the real that escapes, what is missed) and the compulsion to repeat relate directly to passage à l'acte as a moment where the real overwhelms the symbolic. Lacan's distinction between automatism of repetition (automaton) and encounter with tuchē provides a backdrop against which passage to the act appears as a kind of failed encounter—where the real shatters instead of being symbolically "worked through."

Seminar XV: The Psychoanalytic Act (1967-68)

S15 further clarifies the distinction. The contrast becomes explicit: the analytic act involves a transformation of the subject's position within the symbolic, while passage à l'acte involves a catastrophic exit from symbolic position altogether.

Lacan introduces the notion of the enlightened passage to the act (passage à l'acte éclairée) to describe the analyst's particular position—an act that occurs without reflective thought yet is informed by analytic knowledge, which Allouch later reads through the procedure of la passe (The Pass).

Seminar XVIII and Late Seminars

In Seminar XVIII (On a Discourse That Might Not Be a Semblance, 1971), Lacan further refines the distinction through the concept of semblance: "At the limits of discourse, in so far as it strives to make the same semblance hold up, there is from time to time something real, this is what is called the passage à l'acte... acting out [is] to bring the semblance onto the stage, to put it on the stage, to make an example of it." This formulation emphasizes that acting-out operates within the register of semblance (staging, showing, demonstrating), whereas passage to the act breaks through to the real itself.

In the late seminars and through the work of contemporary Lacanians (particularly Jean Allouch), passage à l'acte is reconsidered through new lenses. Allouch's New Remarks on the Passage to the Act (French: Nouvelles remarques sur le passage à l'acte) introduces the concept of the epic leap (saut épique) to distinguish violence and ruptures that can be narrativized and inscribed in meaning from pure passages à l'acte that remain enigmatic and meaningless. In this framework, the Papin sisters' crime is treated as paradigmatic of passage to the act, while certain jihadist massacres or political conversions illustrate the "epic leap."

Conceptual Analysis

The Matrix of Anxiety: Structural Positioning

In Seminar X, Lacan constructs a conceptual matrix with nine cells along two orthogonal axes—the axis of difficulty and the axis of movement—to map the relationship between various psychic phenomena. Freud's three terms from Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety (inhibition, symptom, anxiety) are distributed across the diagonal, with inhibition marking minimal difficulty and minimal movement, and anxiety maximizing both.

The matrix positions passage à l'acte between embarrassment and anxiety on the axis of movement, and at the terminus of a line running from emotion to the symptom on the axis of difficulty. This structural location indicates that passage à l'acte:

Stems from the synergetic operation of two conditions: impediment (narcissistic entrapment) and turmoil (fall of potency due to lack of signifiers)

Functions as a psychic safety valve against anxiety—a desperate defense that prevents the full eruption of anxiety by exiting the scene entirely

Represents the convergence of "too much signifier" (embarrassment) with "a moment of moving immobility" (emotion)

This positioning reveals passage à l'acte not as random or unmotivated but as structurally conditioned by specific psychic coordinates that, when they coincide, overwhelm the subject's capacity to remain within the symbolic order.

Technical Terminology: Embarrassment, Emotion, and Impediment

Lacan's matrix employs terms whose precise meanings prove essential to understanding passage à l'acte's triggering conditions:

Embarrassment (embarras): Lacan defines embarrassment as "the experience of no longer knowing what to do with oneself, of desperately looking for something behind which to shield oneself." Unlike impediment, which involves losing face while retaining the capacity to function elsewhere, embarrassment involves "losing everything, being exposed in the naked reality of one's lack of being." Etymologically, embarrassment evokes "the experience of the bar"—being struck or barred by the law of the signifier, which represents the subject not for what it is but merely for another signifier. Embarrassment derives from too much signifier—the "superabundant infiltration of the symbolic law." From a Lacanian perspective, "embarrassment is always by definition an embarrassment of riches, notably the riches of the signifier."

Emotion (émotion): Lacan recovers the etymologically precise dimension of emotion as "being pushed outside movement" (ex-movere)—"the experience of being knocked out of the motion that is geared towards a particular goal." As Cormac Gallagher explains, emotion involves "being moved to such an extent that it becomes difficult to move—something is so moving that one is arrested in one's movements." This produces what might be called "moving immobility"—a state of being profoundly affected yet utterly unable to respond.

Impediment (empêchement): Glossed by Lacan as "to be ensnared" (être pris au piège), impediment involves being caught in a trap conditioned by the subject's narcissism. It represents the narcissistic blow of losing face—being trapped in one place, though the subject retains the possibility of exercising function elsewhere. Impediment is thus less catastrophic than embarrassment, which threatens total exposure and dissolution.

Turmoil (émoi): Defined by Lacan as "trouble and the fall of might" (chute de puissance), turmoil occurs owing to a lack of available signifiers—a "too little" share of symbolic elements. Where embarrassment derives from an excess of signifier, turmoil stems from signifying poverty—the subject is radically disempowered for want of words.

The passage à l'acte emerges when these coordinates converge: the subject experiences both the narcissistic entrapment of impediment and the signifying poverty of turmoil, or the overwhelming excess of signifier (embarrassment) combined with the arresting force of emotion. At this point of maximum tension, the subject's only recourse is to exit the scene entirely.

Exit from the Symbolic Scene

The defining characteristic of passage à l'acte is its structure as an exit from the symbolic scene. The subject no longer appeals to the Other; the act is not staged. The subject does not address the analyst but rather exits the analytic setting, or engages in behavior that completely disregards the Other's presence or capacity to interpret.

This exit is not just temporal (leaving the room, ending analysis) but structural. It is a refusal or inability to remain within the symbolic order as such, which is why it is experienced by clinicians as a terrifying break in, or beyond, transference.

Lacan employs vivid theatrical metaphors to clarify this distinction. If acting-out involves "making a scene on the stage of the world"—bringing the object a onto the stage as a demonstration addressed to the Other—passage à l'acte involves toppling off the stage entirely. As Miller describes it, passage à l'acte "signals that one is leaving the ambiguities of reason, of speech and language in favour of the act... the subject escapes from... the ambiguities of speech as well as every dialectics of recognition."

One commentator captures the distinction vividly: "Acting-out is when a spectator jumps onto the stage; passage to the act is when an actor jumps from the stage into the audience." Where acting-out stages a performance for interpretation, passage à l'acte represents "the dissolution of the stage of the world in itself."

The Real and Its Irruption

Passage to the act involves a real that devastates the symbolic. The real, here, is not productive but destructive—it overwhelms, shatters, leaves trauma. When Anxiety reaches a certain threshold, when the subject can no longer maintain the symbolic defenses against the real, passage à l'acte may occur. The symbolic order, which normally mediates between subject and real, collapses.

In Seminar XVIII, Lacan emphasizes that passage à l'acte occurs "at the limits of discourse"—at the point where discourse can no longer sustain the semblance, and "something real" breaks through. This is not the real as integrated into symbolic coordinates (as in the analytic act proper) but the real as catastrophic irruption.

Subject Becomes Object

In passage à l'acte, the subject—who is normally constituted as a position within the symbolic order—becomes object. Agency is lost; the subject is overcome. In passage à l'acte, the subject themselves becomes object—something happens to them, through them, without their conscious control or direction. Lacan will later link this place to the position of the objet petit a, the object-cause of desire, when the subject identifies with what is expelled as waste or déchet.

Whereas in acting-out the object a is staged, served up "on a platter" to demonstrate what the analyst has missed, 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."

Niederkommen: The Fall

The German term Niederkommen, which Lacan emphasizes in his early reading of Freud's young homosexual woman, carries multiple meanings. It refers to falling, descending, collapsing. Yet it also carries connotations of childbirth—coming down, being delivered. This polyvalence is important: passage à l'acte is not simply collapse but a kind of giving birth to something—the subject is delivered into the real, becomes the instrument of something real and uncontrollable.

Non-Interpretability and Wild Transference

Crucially, passage à l'acte cannot be directly interpreted. This distinguishes it from acting-out, which, though it bypasses speech, solicits interpretation and can be brought into the symbolic order through analytic work. Passage à l'acte occurs precisely where interpretation fails—where the symbolic order itself has broken down. Attempts to "decode" a pure passage to the act as if it were a disguised signifying message risk reducing it to acting-out or epic leap, precisely what Allouch warns against.

Acting-out, by contrast, constitutes what Lacan calls "wild transference" (transfert sauvage)—a transference that occurs outside or against the analytic frame but nonetheless remains addressed to the Other. 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."

Passage à l'acte goes further: it neither calls for interpretation nor responds to it, because it occurs outside the field of transference altogether—beyond even "wild" transference.

Relationship to Meaning and Narrative

The distinction introduced by contemporary theorists (particularly Jean Allouch) between passage à l'acte and the epic leap hinges on the relationship to meaning. Acts that can be inscribed in a narrative—acts motivated by belief, ideology, or narrative—constitute epic leaps. By contrast, pure passages à l'acte remain enigmatic. The Papin sisters' crime, for example, resists all narrative explanation; it emerges from nowhere and returns to nowhere, and has provoked literature, cinema and psychiatry precisely because "no one has the last word" on it.

Fantasy Traversal and Passage à l'Acte

A crucial theoretical dimension concerns passage à l'acte's relationship to the fantasy framework. The authentic psychoanalytic act—the conclusion of analysis—involves traversing the fantasy (traversée du fantasme), whereby the subject passes through the fundamental fantasy and emerges transformed, no longer captive to its structure.

Passage à l'acte, by contrast, maintains the fantasy framework even while appearing to escape it. The subject who "explodes" in violence believes they are breaking free from an unbearable situation, yet the very form of the violence reproduces their fundamental fantasy. The incel mass shooter who "punishes" women for their perceived rejection actually confirms and strengthens his fantasy structure (women as withholding object, himself as righteous victim). The serial killer who imagines himself "outside society" enacts society's most fundamental fantasy—absolute domination and reduction of the other to pure object.

Where fantasy traversal transforms the subject's libidinal economy, passage à l'acte provides only temporary discharge while leaving the underlying structure intact. The subject remains attached to their symptom through passage à l'acte, gaining a moment of forbidden enjoyment (transgression of symbolic prohibition) that paradoxically reinforces rather than dissolves the symbolic structure.

Jouissance and Passage à l'Acte

Passage à l'acte involves a particular structure of jouissance—the subject's enjoyment beyond the pleasure principle. Unlike the regulated enjoyment of the symptom, which the subject experiences as suffering yet gains satisfaction from maintaining, passage à l'acte offers a catastrophic jouissance—a moment of complete expenditure, dissolution, transgression.

Yet this jouissance proves paradoxical: in the very moment the subject believes they are achieving absolute freedom (escaping all symbolic constraint), they are most thoroughly captured by the symbolic order. The violent passage à l'acte against authority figures confirms the subject's position within the Oedipal structure; the suicidal passage à l'acte intended to escape unbearable demands may represent the ultimate submission to the superego's death drive.

This distinguishes passage à l'acte from the act proper: the act involves assuming a new mode of jouissance, restructuring the subject's libidinal economy, whereas passage à l'acte discharges jouissance without transformation.

Clinical and Technical Dimensions

Manifestations in Different Clinical Structures

Neurosis: Neurotic passage à l'acte typically involves violent or self-destructive behavior that erupts suddenly despite the neurotic's usual capacity to maintain symbolic order. However, neurotic passage à l'acte may be rare; neurotics typically maintain more stable symbolic organization and tend to remain within the register of acting-out and symptom-formation.

Psychosis: Passage à l'acte occurs more frequently in psychosis, where the subject's disconnection from the symbolic order is already established. The psychotic may engage in apparently unmotivated violence or self-harm as a way of managing unbearable real experiences (hallucinations, delusions).

Borderline presentations: Subjects with borderline features frequently engage in behaviors that might be classified as passage à l'acte—cutting, burning, suicide attempts that emerge suddenly and violently. These represent moments of absolute crisis where the subject's fragile symbolic organization collapses, and where the clinician must distinguish between staged appeal (acting-out) and true exit from the scene.

Liberation and the Kakon

In certain psychotic presentations, passage à l'acte may serve a paradoxical liberating function. Drawing on the work of Guiraud and the concepts of von Monakow and de Mourgue, some theorists identify the kakon—the "inner evil" or unbearable core—that the subject attempts to eliminate through violent passage à l'acte.

Maleval defines the kakon as "the surging forth of the real"—an experience of internal persecution or overwhelming affect that the subject cannot symbolize or manage through neurotic defenses. In one clinical example, a psychotic patient named Paul, after killing someone he experienced as a tyrant, reported feeling liberated: "Through an act of violence, Paul tried to get rid of what von Monakow and de Mourgue called the kakon... killing the tyrant was a way of killing his illness."

This does not excuse or justify violent passage à l'acte, but it does illuminate a psychic logic wherein the subject, overwhelmed by an unbearable real, attempts to expel it through action. The passage à l'acte may momentarily relieve the intolerable pressure, even as it precipitates catastrophic consequences.

For the Analyst: Technical and Ethical Implications

The analyst's position in relation to passage à l'acte differs fundamentally from their position regarding acting-out or the act proper:

Helplessness and limitation: The analyst must acknowledge that direct interpretation cannot address passage à l'acte. The analyst's symbolic tools prove inadequate, and any temptation to "make sense" of an act that is structurally outside meaning must be resisted.

Risk management: The analyst must assess risk and implement safety measures. Hospitalization, medication, or increased contact may be necessary to prevent catastrophic outcomes. As Allouch notes, contemporary psychiatric and judicial institutions are "obsessed" with avoiding passage to the act, which structures many clinical and legal decisions.

Avoiding the discourse of the university: A crucial technical point concerns the distinction between analyst errors that precipitate acting-out versus those that precipitate passage à l'acte. Acting-out may be triggered when the analyst abandons the analytic position for "the discourse of the master"—issuing commands, imposing interpretations as authoritative knowledge.

Passage à l'acte, however, is more likely precipitated by errors in transference handling—when the analyst enters "the discourse of the university," wherein "knowledge comes to occupy the place of agency." In the university discourse, the analyst identifies with the function of the "supposed subject of knowing" (sujet supposé savoir) and begins to act as a knowing subject rather than maintaining the position of semblance of object a.

The Dora case exemplifies this dynamic. Freud's "intimate conviction that he knew the answer to the problem of hysteria, and his unscrupulous, indefatigable campaign to convince Dora of the validity of this answer" created the conditions for her departure. Freud "stripped Dora of her love for Mrs. K and imbued her with injunctions and prohibitions, in short with the symbolic law of the father"—creating precisely the "excess of signifier" (embarrassment) that triggers passage à l'acte. As Freud himself acknowledged, he had failed to recognize her positive transference onto Mrs. K while underestimating her negative transference onto him as shadow of Mr. K.

Dora's goodbye—"saying goodbye to Freud very warmly, with the heartiest wishes for the New Year," then never returning—constitutes her passage à l'acte. It is, as one commentator notes, "her way of slapping Freud in the face," designed "to shatter Freud's trust in the value of his psychoanalytic knowledge."

Maintenance of transference: The analyst attempts to maintain a minimal position that preserves the possibility of later re-entry into symbolic discourse. The analyst does not respond to passage à l'acte as though it were meaningful but holds a position of non-collapse, maintaining the structure of the analytic relationship to the extent possible.

Working with Aftermath

Often, the significant analytic work occurs after passage à l'acte—in helping the subject organize their experience retroactively, in attempting to restore symbolic order, in understanding what happened. The subject who has experienced passage à l'acte may emerge with altered symbolic coordinates, and the work of analysis involves helping them re-establish symbolic order while integrating what was learned through this catastrophic encounter.

Examples and Illustrations

Classical Cases

Freud's Young Homosexual Woman: In Freud's 1920 case, the young woman is conducting a public courtship of an aristocratic "society lady" in defiance of her father's wishes. One day, while walking with her lady, she encounters her father on the street. He passes them "with an angry glance" (mit einem zornigen Blick), which she interprets as prohibition. When she reveals to her companion the identity and apparent state of mind of the man who has just passed, the lady insists they end their relationship.

At this moment of convergence—embarrassment (exposure to paternal law, caught in the act by her father) combined with emotion (the profound loss announced by the lady's rejection, "an experience of feeling deeply moved and utterly motionless at the same time")—the young woman throws herself from a railway embankment.

Lacanian reading recognizes this act as a passage à l'acte—a radical exit from the symbolic scene that shatters the neurotic structure, rather than as resistance to treatment. "She topples off the stage... this is the very structure as such of the passage à l'acte." Allouch revisits Lacan's own vacillations on this point, showing how the niederkommen equivocation initially led Lacan to treat the suicide attempt as a symbolic act of childbirth before he reconceived it as passage to the act.

Dora's Slap and Departure: In Freud's Dora case, Lacan identifies two passages à l'acte. First, Dora's slap on Herr K's face after he tells her "my wife means nothing to me" (meine Frau ist mir nichts)—her violent response to the unbearable scene. Second, and more significantly, her departure from Freud's treatment: "Dora's goodbye to Freud... is her way of slapping Freud in the face."

Lacan notes that "Dora tried to finish the complicated intrigue she had set up between herself, her father, Mr. K and Mrs. K" through these acts. Both the slap and the departure constitute "a desperate attempt to end a scene that has become unbearable." Importantly, Lacan also characterizes Dora's and the young homosexual woman's "amorous adventures" as typical examples of acting-out—demonstrating that acting-out can become unbearable and precipitate passage à l'acte.

The Papin Sisters: The 1933 crime of the Papin sisters represents what Allouch calls an exemplary passage à l'acte—an act that remains eternally enigmatic and cannot be narrativized, despite the enormous psychiatric and literary commentary it has generated.

Film and Popular Culture: Žižek's Analyses

Contemporary theorist Slavoj Žižek extensively employs film to illustrate passage à l'acte, demonstrating its relevance to cultural analysis and making the concept accessible through familiar examples.

Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver" (1976): In Žižek's analysis, Travis's climactic shootout represents paradigmatic passage à l'acte. Travis, increasingly unable to integrate into social reality, attempts to assassinate a political candidate (failed acting-out addressed to Betsy). When this fails, he redirects his violence toward the "rescue" of child prostitute Iris—a spectacular exit from the symbolic scene. Žižek emphasizes that this differs from a true act because it leaves Travis's fantasy structure intact; the media's transformation of him into a hero allows him to remain the same alienated subject, his fundamental coordinates unchanged. The passage à l'acte provides cathartic discharge but no transformation.

"Falling Down" (1993): The protagonist's (Michael Douglas) violent rampage across Los Angeles exemplifies passage à l'acte triggered by convergence of embarrassment and emotion. Having lost his job, his family, and his place in the symbolic order (the idealized middle-class American male identity), he becomes "D-Fens"—literally shedding his symbolic identity for the alphanumeric code on his license plate. His journey across LA, destroying what he encounters, represents a subject who has exited the symbolic scene entirely. Yet the film reveals this as failed exit: his violence changes nothing, and he remains captured by the very symbolic coordinates he believes he has transcended.

"Fight Club" (1999): Žižek treats the Narrator's shooting himself (killing Tyler Durden) as ambiguous—hovering between passage à l'acte and genuine act. On one reading, it represents passage à l'acte: a violent discharge that leaves the Narrator's position within capitalism and consumerism fundamentally unchanged (he ends holding hands with Marla, watching credit buildings explode—a spectacular image that changes nothing). On another reading, it approaches the act: by destroying his fantasy projection (Tyler as imaginary ego-ideal), the Narrator might emerge transformed. The film's ambiguity reflects the difficulty of distinguishing passage à l'acte from act.

"Vertigo" (1958): In Žižek's reading, Scottie's obsessive pursuit represents extended acting-out (addressed to Madeleine/Judy as Other), while Judy's final fall from the bell tower represents passage à l'acte—her exit from an unbearable scene where she can neither confess nor maintain the deception.

Political and Historical Cases

Žižek's work provides criteria for distinguishing genuine political acts from passages à l'acte that masquerade as political:

Mass Shootings and Rampage Killings: School shootings, workplace massacres, and similar events represent paradigmatic passages à l'acte in contemporary society. The Columbine shooters, the Virginia Tech killer, and similar figures experience narcissistic wound (humiliation, rejection, loss of symbolic position) and respond with spectacular violence that changes nothing in the symbolic order. Liberal ideology often misrecognizes these as "political statements" about guns, mental health, or social alienation, when they are actually passages à l'acte—exits from unbearable symbolic positions that leave the fundamental coordinates unchanged. Žižek distinguishes these sharply from politically conscious violence.

Terrorism as Passage à l'Acte: Certain forms of terrorism function as passage à l'acte rather than political acts. Suicide bombings motivated by pure narcissistic rage (rather than strategic political calculation) represent exits from unbearable symbolic positions—the humiliated subject who achieves momentary omnipotence through self-destruction. These differ from acts of genuine revolutionary violence (which, however morally questionable, involve strategic transformation of political coordinates). Liberal discourse tends to reduce all political violence to irrational passage à l'acte, while simultaneously elevating certain passages à l'acte (when they serve hegemonic interests) to the status of meaningful political acts.

The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1914): Gavrilo Princip's assassination, in Žižek's analysis, represents passage à l'acte rather than act. While it accidentally triggers World War I (massive contingent effects), the act itself changes nothing at the level of symbolic coordinates—it emerges from nationalist resentment without transforming the symbolic field of politics. Its historical significance derives from contingency, not from the structure of the act itself.

Oklahoma City Bombing (1995): Timothy McVeigh's attack exemplifies right-wing passage à l'acte disguised as political act. McVeigh's anti-government ideology gave his violence an appearance of political meaning, but the act left the fundamental coordinates of state power entirely unchanged—indeed, it reinforced state authority by justifying expanded security measures. The passage à l'acte provided spectacular discharge of resentment while strengthening the very structures it claimed to oppose.

The Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski): Žižek treats Kaczynski's manifesto and bombing campaign as passage à l'acte given post-hoc political rationalization. The elaborate theoretical justification disguises fundamentally meaningless violence—a subject's exit from unbearable modernity that changes nothing in the technological-industrial system. The manifesto functions ideologically, giving appearance of meaning to what remains passage à l'acte.

Contrasted with Genuine Political Acts: Žižek distinguishes these passages à l'acte from authentic political acts that transform symbolic coordinates: Lenin's "April Theses" and the Bolshevik seizure of power (creating new political possibility), the Haitian Revolution (restructuring the meaning of freedom and humanity), key moments in the Civil Rights Movement (transforming what counts as legitimate political demand). These acts change the subject who performs them and reorganize the symbolic field, whereas passages à l'acte discharge tension while maintaining existing structures.

Passage à l'acte vs. suicide: Not all suicides constitute passage à l'acte. Suicides that occur without warning, that lack apparent motive, that leave the subject baffled retrospectively—these approach passage à l'acte. But suicides that are painstakingly planned and symbolically addressed (e.g. in manifestos) belong more to the domain of epic leap or political act.

Žižek provides important distinctions: teenage suicides following romantic rejection or humiliation often represent passages à l'acte—exits from unbearable symbolic positions (the humiliated lover, the excluded peer). By contrast, Socrates drinking hemlock, Christ's crucifixion, or Antigone's acceptance of death represent authentic acts that transform symbolic coordinates (the meaning of philosophy, the divine-human relation, ethical duty). The distinction hinges not on the presence of death but on whether symbolic coordinates are maintained or transformed.

Passage à l'acte vs. acting-out: 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 one source explains: "With the fresh brains, the patient simply indicates to Ernst Kris, 'Everything you tell me is true, simply that does not touch the question—there remains the fresh brains.'" This remains acting-out because it is staged for the analyst, demonstrating the object a on a platter.

Passage à l'acte vs. impulsivity: Not all sudden or impulsive actions constitute passage à l'acte. Passage à l'acte involves a qualitative break—an exit rather than merely sudden occurrence. Clinically, this distinction has consequences for risk assessment, treatment planning, and the decision to hospitalize.

Passage à l'acte vs. the authentic act: This distinction proves central to Lacanian theory and receives extensive treatment in Žižek's work. The authentic act transforms the symbolic coordinates that determine reality—it changes the subject who performs it ("wiped out and born again") and restructures the symbolic field. Passage à l'acte, by contrast, leaves symbolic coordinates unchanged, provides only temporary discharge, and often reinforces the existing order by demonstrating its necessity. Žižek's formula: passage à l'acte asks "What if I just destroy everything?" while the authentic act asks "What if the very coordinates that make this situation seem impossible were themselves changed?"

Extended Theoretical Applications

Jean Allouch: Epic Leap and the Passage à l'Acte

Jean Allouch's work introduces the crucial refinement of the epic leap (saut épique):

Epic leap: Acts that involve a break in existential trajectory but can be inscribed in narrative (e.g., jihadist acts, religious or political conversions). The epic leap allows itself to be understood, contextualized, and made sense of.

Passage à l'acte (proper): Acts that remain outside meaning, that cannot be inscribed in narrative, that remain eternally enigmatic.

Allouch also introduces the notion of an "enlightened passage to the act" to describe the analytic act at the end of analysis and the procedure of la passe: here, the subject who has traversed analysis takes up the place of the analyst precisely by performing an act in which "to think is to capitulate," yet an act that is nonetheless informed by analytic knowledge and the subject's division.

The Constructive Passage à l'Acte: Working-Through and the End of Analysis

From the late 1960s onward, particularly in Seminar XV (The Psychoanalytic Act), Lacan develops the concept of passage à l'acte in a constructive direction, linking it to the goal and end of psychoanalytic treatment.

In Seminar IX (Identification, 1961-62), before the systematic theorization of the anxiety matrix, Lacan identifies Descartes' Discourse on the Method as an example of passage à l'acte. Descartes expresses fundamental doubt, discarding everything acquired "during his journeys in the world of learning as spurious knowledge." He liberates himself "from the straightjacket imposed by the purportedly scientific opinions of his era, in order to clear the path for the discovery of a new beginning"—the cogito ergo sum. Descartes "separates himself from the alienating constraints imposed by the Other of authoritative knowledge, and proceeds to the formulation of an innovative philosophical principle."

This constructive dimension connects to Freud's concept of working-through (Durcharbeitung). At the end of Seminar XI, Lacan returns to this "mysterious notion," emphasizing that "the end of analysis occurs after the mapping of the subject in relation to the a, when the experience of the fundamental phantasy becomes the drive." Working-through involves "the process whereby an analysand runs through the cycle of analytic experience a sufficient amount of times for the fantasy to give way to the drive, and for making possible the transition from analysand to analyst."

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, "Lacan did not hesitate to qualify this transition from analysand to psychoanalyst as a passage à l'acte." Working-through, then, "may be conceived as the psychic force that clears the path for this very act"—a kind of path-breaking "not of the neurones, but of the mental logic of the fantasy, and in view of the crystallisation of an act."

Significantly, Freud himself compared working-through to abreaction (Abreagieren)—the discharge of affective energy that Freud and Breuer had theorized in their early cathartic method. "Freud's concept of abreaction re-emerged... in the guise of a constructive passage à l'acte, whose occurrence is tantamount to the precipitation of a psychoanalytic training effect, and the possible transition from analysand to psychoanalyst."

The analyst's position differs crucially from the destructive passage à l'acte: "Divided subjectivity is thus exchanged for the object a when the analysand comes to adopt the position of the analyst, with the double caveat that this transition is not triggered by the unexpected synergy of embarrassment and emotion, but by a process of working-through, and that the analyst is not supposed to identify with the object a, but only to operate as its semblance."

Žižek: The Act vs. Passage à l'Acte in Political Theory

Slavoj Žižek's extensive engagement with Lacanian psychoanalysis provides crucial theoretical elaborations of passage à l'acte, particularly in distinguishing it from the authentic political act. His work demonstrates the concept's relevance beyond clinical psychoanalysis, extending it into political theory, ideology critique, and cultural analysis.

Symbolic Restructuring vs. Symbolic Maintenance

In The Ticklish Subject (1999) and Less Than Nothing (2012), Žižek establishes clear criteria for distinguishing the authentic act from passage à l'acte:

The authentic act:

Transforms the symbolic coordinates that determine what counts as reality

Changes the subject who performs it—the subject is "wiped out and born again"

Restructures the symbolic field, creating new political possibilities

Examples: Antigone's burial of Polyneices, Christ's sacrifice, Lenin's "April Theses," the Haitian Revolution

Passage à l'acte:

Leaves the symbolic coordinates fundamentally unchanged

The subject remains trapped in the same fantasy structure

Provides only temporary discharge or release

Often reinforces the existing order by demonstrating its necessity or by providing spectacular distraction

Examples: school shootings, certain forms of terrorism, workplace rampages, narcissistic suicide

Žižek's key insight: "The passage to the act is the false appearance of an act—it maintains the libidinal investment in the existing symbolic order even as it appears to break from it." The subject believes they are achieving radical freedom, yet the very form of their violence confirms their captivity to existing coordinates.

Hegelian Framework: Abstract vs. Determinate Negation

In Less Than Nothing (2012) and Absolute Recoil (2014), Žižek provides a Hegelian reading that deepens the theoretical framework:

Passage à l'acte = Abstract Negation:

Simply negates the existing order without positing anything new

Remains trapped in opposition to what it negates

Like the anarchist who wants to "destroy everything" without articulating what comes after

Or like Hegel's "beautiful soul" who refuses the corrupted world through withdrawal

The Act Proper = Determinate Negation:

Negates the existing order by transforming its internal coordinates

Creates new symbolic space through immanent critique

Like the revolutionary who transforms the very terms of political struggle

Negation that is simultaneously affirmation of new possibility

This connects to Hegel's critique of the "frenzy of self-conceit"—subjects who exit the social order through abstract negation (mere destruction, withdrawal) rather than transforming it through determinate negation (restructuring from within). Passage à l'acte represents abstract negation: spectacular but ultimately empty gesture that changes nothing fundamental.

The False Act and Ideological Recuperation

In The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989) and Tarrying with the Negative (1993), Žižek introduces the concept of the false act:

Acts that appear to be radical transformations but actually reinforce the existing order:

Corporate "disruption" and "innovation" (Silicon Valley ideology of transformation that leaves capitalism intact)

Reformist politics that appear radical but preserve fundamental structures

Therapeutic "breakthroughs" that reintegrate the subject into normality

Lifestyle radicalism (changing consumption patterns while leaving production relations unchanged)

Both the false act and passage à l'acte maintain the underlying fantasy even while appearing to break from it. This reveals how passage à l'acte can be ideologically mobilized—spectacular gestures of transgression that actually strengthen the system by providing cathartic discharge without transformation.

Ideology and the Misrecognition of Passage à l'Acte

In Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (2008) and First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (2009), Žižek critiques how liberal ideology systematically misrecognizes the distinction between acts and passages à l'acte:

Liberal responses to violence:

Treat all violence as irrational passage à l'acte (pathologizing political resistance)

Reduce structural political problems to individual psychological problems

Use therapeutic discourse to neutralize genuine political acts

Characterize revolutionary movements as "extremism" or "fanaticism"

Hegemonic ideology operates through double misrecognition:

Genuine political acts are misrecognized as mere passages à l'acte (anti-globalization protests characterized as "violent riots")

Passages à l'acte are given political meaning they don't possess when they serve hegemonic interests (state violence rationalized as necessary)

School shooters are analyzed for "political statements" about society when they represent pure passage à l'acte

Meanwhile, systematic state violence (drone strikes, police killings) is normalized rather than recognized as passage à l'acte of state power

Žižek argues that liberal ideology needs this confusion—it allows the system to pathologize resistance while elevating system-reinforcing violence to political necessity.

Subjective, Symbolic, and Systemic Violence

In Violence (2008), Žižek's three-part distinction illuminates passage à l'acte's ideological function:

Subjective violence: Visible, dramatic acts (terrorism, riots, violent crime)—often passages à l'acte that appear as disruptions but leave fundamental coordinates unchanged

Symbolic violence: Embedded in language and social structures (racism, sexism, class oppression)

Systemic violence: The "normal" functioning of economic and political systems (poverty, exploitation, ecological destruction)

Spectacular passages à l'acte (school shootings, terrorist attacks, riots) function as distractions from systemic violence. Media focus on dramatic individual violence obscures the ongoing structural violence that constitutes normality. The passage à l'acte thus serves ideology by providing spectacle that allows the status quo to persist—people focus on the exceptional event rather than the systematic violence that defines everyday life under capitalism.

Controversies and Debates

The Problem of Meaninglessness

A crucial controversy concerns whether passage à l'acte is truly meaningless or whether this meaninglessness reflects analytical inability to decode meaning. Allouch insists on maintaining a structural distinction between actions that can be narrated (epic leap) and those that cannot (passage to the act), arguing that collapsing the distinction risks losing the specificity of Lacan's concept. The debate has implications for treatment: if passage à l'acte has no meaning, attempts at meaning-making analysis in its immediate aftermath may be counterproductive.

Žižek's contribution complicates this debate: passage à l'acte may be meaningless at the level of symbolic inscription (it cannot be narrativized coherently) yet highly meaningful at the level of fantasy maintenance and ideological function. The act "means nothing" in the sense that it transforms nothing, yet it serves to preserve the subject's fundamental fantasy and can be mobilized ideologically. This suggests a dialectical relationship between meaning and meaninglessness in passage à l'acte.

Violence and Responsibility

A critical debate concerns responsibility for passage à l'acte. If the act occurs where conscious choice and intention fail, in what sense is the subject responsible? Some argue that the very unconsciousness of passage à l'acte precludes moral responsibility, while others contend that even unconscious action has consequences for which the subject must ultimately answer. Lacanian theory tends to shift the focus from moral blame to structural location: what is at stake is not exonerating the subject but understanding the place from which the act arises.

Žižek's political perspective adds another dimension: while individual responsibility remains important, focusing exclusively on individual pathology obscures the systemic conditions that produce passages à l'acte. The question becomes not just "Is this individual responsible?" but "What symbolic and systemic violence creates conditions where passage à l'acte emerges?" Liberal ideology's focus on individual psychology depoliticizes what are often responses to unbearable structural conditions.

Diagnostic Precision

A practical controversy concerns the differential diagnosis and identification of passage à l'acte. Misidentification has clinical consequences: treating passage à l'acte as acting-out (through interpretation) may fail; treating it as impulsivity (through behavioral management) may miss the real psychological structure. Debates within Lacanian and post-Lacanian psychoanalysis concern how narrowly or broadly the category should be applied and whether it should be reserved for rare, catastrophic breaks or used more widely in everyday clinical practice.

Žižek's work suggests the category has wider applicability than traditional clinical contexts—extending to political violence, cultural phenomena, and everyday ideology. Yet this expansion risks diluting the concept's precision. The challenge is maintaining theoretical rigor while recognizing passage à l'acte's relevance across multiple domains.

See Also

Act Acting out

Anxiety Object

Other Psychosis

Subject Woman