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Dr. Rosenfeld's paper is one that I find very interesting. Since the Kleinian approach is one which has special concern with the early months of life and especially the preverbal period—and that is a period the effects of which on later developments have greatly preoccupied me—it is naturally a strong temptation to undertake a comparison of the different points of view. I believe also that the way in which the events of that period are reconstructed and interpreted to the patient in the transference setting may be very important in affecting the degree and nature of acting out during analysis.
I would certainly agree with Dr. Rosenfeld that some acting out is inevitable in any analysis of depth and that in that sense there is a “need” for it. However, when it is massive and/or is not brought sufficiently into the analysis by the patient it seems to me both to endanger the efficacy of the analysis itself and to run the risk of creating severe and not always reversible complications in the patient's life.
While I found Dr. Rosenfeld's paper aroused many helpful questions in my mind, I did miss in it a sufficiently detailed consideration of technical procedures and of the nature of the acting out involved, to give me a feeling of assurance that I would be understanding him accurately if I undertook critical comments.
I suppose there are so many publications all the time that it is impossible to keep up with even the major literature. I am aware that I certainly cannot do justice to all the psychoanalytic literature based on Mrs. Klein's theories, much as I might wish to. I note, too, that while Dr. Rosenfeld quotes generously from my early (1950) article on “General Problems of Acting Out,” he has not utilized a later article (1963) on “Acting Out in the Transference” (J. Am. Acad. of Child Psych., Vol. II, No. 1), nor any of the other references to acting out in other articles of mine, especially one (1959) on “Technical Problems of Transference” (J. Am. Psa. Ass'n, Vol.