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This issue consists of symposia and papers presented at the Twenty-Fifth International Psychoanalytic Congress, held in Copenhagen in 1967.
Acting Out. Pp. 164-230.
Anna Freud points out that her father originally used the term, acting out, to describe repetition of the past in the transference in contradistinction to remembering and verbalizing. As analytic interest shifted from Oedipal to preoedipal conflicts and from id to ego, increasingly positive value was placed on acting out in the transference. The same term came to be applied only to reenactment of the past outside of the analysis. This confusion about the definition of acting out remains a troublesome theme throughout the symposium and is not resolved.
Leon Grinberg describes the role of object loss and separation in acting out; during analysis, vacations often trigger acting out episodes. In an attempt to clarify the meaning of the term and particularly to differentiate it from neurotic action, Leo Rangell defines acting out as 'action undertaken by the patient to resist the movement of the therapeutic process, … a specific type of neurotic action, directed towards interrupting the process of achieving effective insight …'. Similarly, Thorkil Vanggaard confines acting out to behavior outside the analysis, meant to provide relief of tensions created by the analytic situation. If this behavior is not motivated by tensions from the analysis, he calls it simply 'impulsive action'. The confusion and frustration surrounding the term, acting out, were well expressed by David Beres in the panel discussion at the close of the Congress. He had conducted a seminar on acting out for two years and 'we came out with more uncertainty about what the concept meant and how it was used than when we started'.