The author proposes to differentiate two types of acting out in the analytic situation: 'direct' and 'indirect'. The former is not equivalent to a memory and has little or no symbolic value. One sees such acting out in patients who develop transference reactions rather than transference neurosis, in psychosomatic cases, and in those cases having an elemental and essentially destructive superego. 'Indirect' acting out is the type observed in classical neurosis. In such cases the superego is formed in the phallic phase in relation to the passing of the Oedipus complex.