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Analysts, as a rule, tolerate communications in the therapeutic situation in addition to those expressed in words. This ‘tolerant’ policy leads to certain consequences. Perhaps the most important of them is that it opens the door to acting-out, which is tantamount to regression, for words are always a more adult form of communication than action or even gesture.
In a way, the process of maturation and civilization amounts to moving less and less physical mass, i.e. using less and less muscular energy, for the expression of the same idea, effect, or message. That means that as fewer and fewer muscles are involved, the movements become finer and subtler. Of all the skeletal muscles perhaps the speech muscles have the smallest mass and are the subtlest and finest; consequently, moving them uses less energy than moving any other. The maturation process, however, does not stop here. The child, or the primitive, first substitutes shouting or screaming in place of acting, then he learns to shout and scream less, i.e. to express the same intensity of emotion by using smaller amounts of physical mass and muscular energy. The reward for this restraint and discipline is an ever increasing subtlety and richness of expression involving the conscious and preconscious mental life. It is thinkable that it may extend beyond it into the unconscious; this would be another instance of what Freud called the education of the instincts.
It is in the nature of the analytical situation to reverse, to some extent, these processes of maturation and civilization. Instead of subtly adumbrating or implying, the patient learns to state explicitly and often with primitive intensity what he thinks and feels; soon he realizes that detached factual descriptions are not sufficient, their concomitant emotions will have to be expressed as well. He then proceeds to vary the intensity and pitch of his voice, to use gestures or movements; he may even be carried away by his emotions, and so he comes to ac