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The primary aim of this communication is to present evidence for an oral source of acting out. I have taken expository material from the history, analytic examination and findings of a not unusual instance of mutual and bilateral acting out between parent and child because it illustrates so well the oral origin, aim and object of the process. My secondary purpose is to show how this relation between oral drives and acting out determined the character of the transference situation and entered into the treatment of this particular case.
I am not taking the view that oral impulses and acting out are identical. It is more that there is a similarity in the quality of the activity and behavior of both which establishes the relation. I have drawn evidence of their common genesis from observation of the need of both oral cravings and acting out for a satisfying object, for immediate gratification, and for urgent, incorporating tendencies without regard for the object. This preliminary description, particularly the intransigent, "no waiting" category of action marks out an early, infantile state where oral activity is predominant and ego functions, such as the capacity for delay and waiting, are not yet developed.
Among the essential qualities of oral needs are their urgency and incapacity for obtaining satisfaction from substitutes. It may be possible to provide "food for thought" but not thought for food. Acting out does not permit any substitute for immediate gratification in action. Moreover, the insatiability of oral demands contributes its strength to later libidinal stages of development and persists in the form of acting out of the impulses associated with them.