Acting out and Separation Anxiety

With the help of clinical material from two female patients with whom acting out was a major feature of their treatment I have examined the connection between acting out behaviour and separation anxiety.

To begin with, I have drawn on Freud's conception of acting out and have shown that this kind of behaviour can be closely associated with transference in that both can act as a resistance as well as an aid to the psychoanalytic process.

The link between acting out and preverbal experience is commented on and attention is given to the defensive splitting of the primary object during early development.

It is then suggested that one of the essential roots associated with acting out behaviour is that of object loss and separation.

The clinical examples show that if the child separates in a strongly hostile manner from the mother then acting out associated with separations during analysis is going to be greater.

In view of the deficits in the early mother child relationships of the two patients described I adopted a therapeutic strategy based less on confrontation and limit setting and more on a consistent attempt to understand what was being communicated in the acting out behaviour.