Acting out

Acting out is a psychological term from the parlance of defense mechanisms and self-control, meaning to perform an action in contrast to bearing and managing the impulse to perform it. The acting done is usually anti-social and may take the form of acting on the impulses of an addiction (e.g. drinking, drug taking or shoplifting) or in a means designed (often unconsciously or semi-consciously) to garner attention (e.g. throwing a tantrum or behaving promiscuously). The opposite attitude or behaviour is called acting in. Acting out is a psychological term from the parlance of defense mechanisms and self-control, meaning to perform an action in contrast to bearing and managing the impulse to perform it. The acting done is usually anti-social and may take the form of acting on the impulses of an addiction (e.g. drinking, drug taking or shoplifting) or in a means designed (often unconsciously or semi-consciously) to garner attention (e.g. throwing a tantrum or behaving promiscuously). The opposite attitude or behaviour is called acting in. In general usage, the action performed is destructive to self or others and may inhibit the development of more constructive responses to the feelings in question. The term is used in this way in sexual addiction treatment, psychotherapy, criminology and parenting. Acting out painful feelings may be contrasted with expressing them in ways more helpful to the sufferer, e.g. by talking out, expressive therapy, psychodrama or mindful awareness of the feelings. Developing the ability to express one's conflicts safely and constructively is an important part of impulse control, personal development and self-care. Freud considered that patients in analysis tended to act out their conflicts in preference to remembering them – repetition compulsion. The analytic task was then to help 'the patient who does not remember anything of what he has forgotten and repressed, but acts it out' to replace present activity by past memory. Otto Fenichel added that acting out in an analytic setting potentially offered valuable insights to the therapist; but was nonetheless a psychological resistance in as much as it deals only with the present at the expense of concealing the underlying influence of the past. Lacan also spoke of 'the corrective value of acting out', though others qualified this with the proviso that such acting out must be limited in the extent of its destructive/self-destructiveness. Annie Reich pointed out that the analyst may use the patient by acting out in an indirect countertransference, for example to win the approval of a supervisor.