Reports of Discussions of Acting out

Schwarz opened the discussion by reporting on one of the types of acting out which Anna Freud had characterized. She described the work and conclusions of the study group on delinquency of the Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic. This planned presentation may have influenced the course of the subsequent discussion to be concerned more with the consideration of the contrasts and similarities between neurotic and impulsive acting out than with the discussion of the evolution of the concept and the evaluation of its present role.

The group, started in 1962 under Schwarz's leadership, has studied seven children aged 7 to 15 for two to four years. It was set up to investigate three concepts, which were soon seen to be closely interlocked: acting out, the object relations of delinquents, and frustration tolerance. All the children were permanent actors-out. Schwarz considers that neurotic acting out shows clearly the mechanism involved in the permanent acting out of the children, which she regards as essentially similar in structure to a neurotic symptom. Many of the children studied came from "good" homes; and analysis has helped all of them. To counter the criticism that they therefore could not have been "real" delinquents, Schwarz asked two questions: How can one reach "real" delinquents so early in the history of their delinquency? And what would have happened to these children (whom she later described) if they had not been analysed?

The most frequent symptom was stealing. Schwarz distinguished six categories, making some suggestions about their relationship to types of symptom in the adult. She therefore regards acting out as determined by a variety of conflicts in the character. The six categories are:

• i.stealing as a means of restoring the lost mother-child relationship, e.g. stealing food as a defence against sadness. This type of stealing might be related to later over-eating, drug taking, addiction.

• ii.an aggressive