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The term '[[passage to the act]]' ([[French]]: ''passageà l'[[acte]]'', [[German]]: ''[[Agieren]]'') (borrowed by [[psychoanalysis]] from [[clinical psychiatry]] and [[criminology]]) refers to a [[particular ]] kind of [[action]] defined by its [[aggressivity|aggressive]] and [[violence|violent]] [[character]].

While both are last resorts against anxiety, the subject who [[acts ]] something out still remains in the SCENE, whereas a passage to the act involves an exit from the [[scene ]] altogether. Acting out is a [[Symbolic]] [[message ]] addressed to the [[big Other]], whereas a passage to the act is a flight from the Other into the [[dimension ]] of the [[Real]]. The passage to the act is thus an exit from the [[Symbolic]] network, a [[dissolution ]] of the [[social ]] bond. Although the passage to the act does not, according to Lacan, necessarily imply an underlying [[Psychosis]], it does entail a dissolution of the subject; for a [[moment]], the subject becomes a pure [[object]].

The phrase 'passage to the act' comes from French [[clinical ]] [[psychiatry]], which uses it to designate those impulsive acts, of a violent or criminal [[nature]], which sometimes mark the onset of an acute [[psychotic ]] episode.

The impulsive act marks the point when the [[subject]] proceeds from a violent [[idea ]] or [[intention ]] to the corresponding act.In "passage to the act" it is the idea of "passage" that is important, for it refers to the [[relationship ]] between the act and the supposed [[mental ]] [[process ]] that prepares for and facilitates it.The [[passage to the act]] raises the issue of the connection between [[thought ]] and action.

It was not in a [[philosophical ]] context that the [[notion ]] of passage to the act was developed, however, but rather in connection with the often unpredictable character of certain antisocial and violent acts. What the [[word ]] "passage" denoted was the sudden lurch from a fantasied act to a real act, a shift that would normally be inhibited by [[defense ]] mechanisms.

In the 1962-63 [[seminar]], ''[[L'angoisse|Anxiety]]'' (''L'[[angoisse]]''), [[Jacques Lacan]] states that [[anxiety]] can be resolved through a [[passage to the act]].<ref>1962-63</ref> He asserts a [[distinction ]] between the [[passage to the act]] and [[acting out]].

The [[passage to the act]] is the effect of a pre-[[oedipal ]] mode of [[psychic ]] functioning dominated by primary [[processes]], by an inability to tolerate [[frustration]], respect [[reality]]-testing, or curb a tendency to impulsiveness. In this view a weak ego may be [[responsible ]] for a propensity to [[pass ]] to the act.The "act" here is more like a motor [[discharge ]] than an action intended to transform reality, which requires the subject to delay the discharge by means of a thought-process permitting the psychic [[apparatus ]] to endure tension so long as release is thus deferred (Freud, 1911b).

Passage to the act concerns the relationship between the act and its mentalization; it could indeed be regarded as a near-[[total ]] [[exclusion ]] of any mental process from the act. Any [[understanding ]] of such an act, which is not assumed but rather presented by the [[agent ]] as passively experienced, must depend on an effort of decipherment (Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1987; Balier, 1988). For this [[reason ]] passage to the act has been likened to somatization, since both are characterized by a [[lack ]] of psychic [[working]]-out, even by alexithymia.

Alternatively, it might be argued that passage to the act does not rely on an [[absence ]] of mentalization, but rather on a kind of "telescoping" (Aulagnier, 1975/2001) of [[fantasy ]] and reality. In this perspective, far from [[being ]] the consequence of a failure of mentalization, the passage to the act results from an overflowing of the fantasy [[world ]] into reality because an element of reality has impinged on the fantasy scenario and opened a breach enabling the act to externalize it.

It is hard, therefore, to reduce the notion of passage to the act to a simple [[causality]]. Instead, instances of passage to the act should be defined in [[terms ]] of the particular [[individual ]] involved, and their specific [[psychodynamic ]] features examined [[case ]] by case. Thus [[schizophrenic ]] and [[paranoid ]] homicidal passages to the act [[present ]] considerable differences, even if both embody an inadequate attempt to dissipate unbearable anxiety. A paranoid passage to the act is liable to occur when the persecuting object is lost [[sight ]] of and the persecutory [[system ]] is destabilized (Zagury, 1990). The passage to the act in borderline [[conditions ]] depends rather on a lack of identifications (Bergeret, 2002), while such acts in adolescents may be fostered by the emergence of destabilizing [[instinctual ]] impulses conducive to either [[excess ]] or asceticism.

If one resists the temptation to simplify the notion, it appears that passage to the act may have a large variety of etiologies. Meanwhile, the notion clearly belongs to a very broad philosophical [[discussion ]] of the relationship between thought and action.

In [[order ]] to illustrate what he means, [[Lacan]] refers to the case of the young [[homosexual ]] [[woman]] treated by [[Freud]].<ref>Freud, 1920a</ref> Freud reports that the young [[Woman]] was [[walking ]] in the street with the [[Woman]] she loved when she was spotted by her [[father]], who cast an angry glance at her. Immediately afterwards, she rushed off and threw herself over a wall down the side of a cutting onto a railway line. Lacan argues that this [[suicide ]] attempt was a passage to the act; it was not a message addressed to anyone, since [[symbolisation ]] had become [[impossible ]] for the young [[Woman]]. Confronted with her father's [[desire]], she was consumed with an uncontrollable anxiety and reacted in an impulsive way by [[identifying ]] with the object. Thus she fell down (Ger. niederkommt) like the [[objet ]] [[petit a]], the leftover of [[signification ]] (Lacan, 1962-3: seminar of 16 January 1963).

See also: [[Abstinence]]/rule of abstinence; Acting out/acting in; Criminology and psychoanalysis; Thought.[[Bibliography]]