Acting out

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"Acting out" is the term which is used in the Standard Edition to translate the German term Agieren used by Freud.

Lacan, following a tradition in psychoanalytic writing, uses this term in English.


Repeating and Remembering

One of the most important themes running throughout Freud's work is the opposition between repeating and remembering.

These are, so to speak, "contrasting ways of bringing the past into the present."[1]

If past events are repressed from memory, they return by expressing themselves in actions; when the subject does not remember the past, therefore, he is condemned to repeat it by acting it out.

Conversely, psychoanalytic treatment aims to break the cycle of repetition by helping the patient to remember.

  1. Laplanche, Jean and Pontalis, Jean-Betrand. The Language of Psycho-Analysis. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis. 1967. p.4