Contribution to Symposium on Acting Out1

My contribution to this Symposium is based on the work of a group, On Problems of Delinquency, which forms part of the research programme of the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic. We have been fortunate in having Miss Freud's advice and criticism whenever we presented our cases or our theoretical assumptions in staff meetings.

Only clinical material gained during child analysis has been used in this project: five children aged 10–15 were in treatment for between two and four years. The analysis of one case is still going on and two new cases have started recently. When we began the research in 1962 we set ourselves the task of studying three concepts: (i) Acting out; (ii) The Pathology of Object Relationships in the Delinquent; (iii) Frustration Tolerance.

We soon realised how interlocked these concepts are and how difficult it would be to isolate them from each other. I shall, naturally, concentrate here on the concept of acting out. We, in our study, look upon the delinquent act as a symptom formation, a compromise solution between the unconscious attempt to avoid painful affect, whilst the content of the acting out represents a striving towards immediate libidinal or aggressive gratification. This corresponds roughly to the analytic model of symptom formation.

All our cases are permanent or chronic actors-out in contrast to children who only act out under acute stress, e.g. a child who steals biscuits from other children's lockers while his mother is in hospital. Although these children usually stop their acting out when the mother returns, they nevertheless show us clearly the mechanism of acting out as a breakdown of control and a regression to earlier forms of behaviour. From the analysis of our cases we came to the conclusion that conflicts which are acted out repeatedly and compulsively can evolve from different agencies in the structure: ego and id, ego and superego, ego and ego-ideal.

As our first study we chose stealing, the most frequent symptom of d