An acting out 'is an unconscious act for the relief or temporary solution of internal tensions'. This partial discharge can seem adequate only in those conditions called character neuroses. Such patients try to establish with the analyst as a new object a primitive type of relationship, hence 'acting' in the transference. Dreams are closely related to acting out. The analytic situation in many ways favors acting out. The 'neutrality' of the therapist implies a prohibition to the patient. The author thinks it 'more than coincidence' that just as psychoanalysis passed from using an 'acting, suggesting, conducting' therapist to a more passive one, so it was led to the discovery of sexuality as the etiology of hysteria. The patients choose regressive acting out as a means of avoiding those subjective experiences that require verbalization.