Neurotic “Acting Out” as a Basis for Sexual Promiscuity in Women

In a study of illegitimacy (2), the author has come to the conclusion that in a certain number of cases, pregnancies represent hysterical dissociation states in which girls act out their incest phantasies as an expression of the CEdipus situation. This conclusion was based on a finding of a group of girls in whom the pregnancy was associated with complete lack of interest in the man who was responsible for the pregnancy, so completely that his name was not even known. These patients were mostly girls who were intelligent, came from very good homes, were in average economic circumstances and were not promiscuous. It seemed that in these cases the man who was responsible for the pregnancy was a sort of a phantom father on whom the patient projected her unconscious desire to have a child by her father, frequently as a result of competition with the mother.

Closely connected with the problem of illegitimacy on a neurotic basis, there is the problem of sexual delinquency in girls which is just as baffling and difficult to understand. Analytical experience with several of such cases may throw some light on the subject. It seems that some forms of sexual delinquency may be a manifestation of an “acting out” process. About the whole subject of acting out we have but a very meagre understanding although it is an every day occurrence in life as well as in psychoanalytical practice. People constantly act out their unconscious impulses. “Acting out”, as we understand it, is what seems to be an irrational and unpredictable social behavior which is an expression of unconscious impulses and drives connected with the therapeutic situation. Weiss states that by “acting out” we mean behavior of a person who repeats without