Concept
Acting out
The expression in action, rather than in remembering and words, of unconscious wishes, fantasies or memories stirred up by the treatment, whether in the sessions or in the patient's life outside them. Freud, who called it Agieren, saw it as a repetition that takes the place of remembering and so works as a resistance within the transference. Later analysts disagreed over how far it should be curbed or put to use, and attention to the analyst's own part in such action led to the notion of enactment.
Read more- Broader concept
- Repetition compulsion
- Introduced by
- Sigmund Freud
- Key works
- 4
introduced by
- Sigmund Freud 1905 In the postscript to the Dora case Freud first uses 'agieren' for the patient's breaking off the treatment: taking revenge on him as she had wanted to on Herr K., she acted out a piece of her memories and fantasies instead of reproducing it in the treatment.
developed by
- Sigmund Freud 1912 In the technical papers Freud places acting out within the transference: the unconscious impulses seek to be reproduced rather than remembered, the patient wants to act on them in the relation to the analyst, and the treatment must bring them back to remembering and psychic working over.
reworked by
- Sándor Ferenczi 1924 With Rank, Ferenczi reverses the weighting of Freud's 'Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through' (1914), which treated the wish to relive in place of remembering as resistance: what cannot be remembered can only be repeated in the treatment, so repetition, actively encouraged and then turned into present memory, is given the main role in technique.
- Otto Rank 1924 With Ferenczi, Rank reverses the weighting of Freud's 'Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through' (1914), which treated the wish to relive in place of remembering as resistance: what cannot be remembered can only be repeated in the treatment, so repetition, actively encouraged and then turned into present memory, is given the main role in technique.