Acting out

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Sigmund Freud

"Acting out" is the term used to translate the German word Agieren used by Freud.

The term "acting out" is used to translate the German word Agieren used by Freud.






Repetition

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]

Memory

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.

Motivation

Although an element of repetition can be found in almost every human action, the term "acting out" is usually reserved for those actions which display "an impulsive aspect relatively out of harmony with the subject's usual motivational patterns" and which are therefore "fairly easy to isolate from the overall trends of his activity."[2]

The subject fails to understand his motives for the action.

Jacques Lacan

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

From a Lacanian perspective, this basic definition of "acting out" is true but incomplete; it ignores the dimension of the Other.

Recollection

Thus while Lacan maintains that acting out results from a failure to recollect the past, he emphasizes the intersubjective dimension of recollection.

In other words, recollection does not merely involve recalling something to consciousness, but also communicating this to an Other by means of speech.

Hence acting out results when recollection is made impossible by the refusal of the Other to listen.

Communication

When the Other has become "deaf," the subject cannot convey a message to him in words, and is forced to expressed the message in actions.

The acting out is thus a ciphered message which the subject addresses to an Other, although the subject himself is neither conscious of the content of this message nor even aware that his actions express a message.

It is the Other who is entrusted with deciphering the message; yet it is impossible for him to do so.

See Also

References

  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
  2. 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