THE CONCEPT OF ACTING OUT

IN RELATION TO THE

ADOLESCENT PROCESS

Peter Blos, Ph.D.

In clinical reports on adolescents, the term "acting out" is bound

to he in prominence. One has, in fact, corne to recognize horn experi-
ence that acting' out during adolescence is as phase-specific as play is
for childhood and direct language communication is for adulthood.
We have come to consider acting out a typical adolescent phenome-
non; indeed, the two have become almost synonymous.
Yet, on closer inspection, we realize that loose generalizations and
a careless recourse to the concept of acting out are responsible for the
extensive use of the term in relation to adolescence. There is no doubt
that normal adolescents in our culture show a proclivity to action
which is often of such intense and compelling nature that one is
tempted to speak of an adolescent addiction to action. Whether the
special condition of adolescence either favors acting out or merely
gives a predisposition to acting out unbridled reins, this question shall
occu py us in this pa per.
The theoretical distinction between action and acting out will not
be elaborated at this point. The essential differences will gain in clar-
ity through the delineation of acting out from the total phenomenol-
ogy of action and through the investigation of the particular function

Psychoanalyst; Consultant and Training Therapist, Jewish Board of Guardians, New

York.

118
Acting Out and the Adolescent Process 119

which acting out assumes during the adolescent period. In clinical

work, we must admit, these delineations are not always as easily es-
tablished as we desire. Often we learn from fruitless efforts in dealing
with playacting or uninhibited action discharge that what confronts
us is an acting-out phenomenon; from the reverse, we learn a lesson
equally well. What differentiates behavioral manifestations of similar
appearance but of different structure shall be explored in this paper.
Such queries will lead to a search for the reasons why the adolescent
process tends to promote and favor the mechanism of acting out as a
homeostatic device. As a consequence of such explorations, the ques-
tion shall finally be asked whether the concept of acting out in its
traditional formulation is too narrow to accommodate relevant ado-
lescent phenomena, and whether it is necessary to expand the stand-
ard concept in order to enhance its clinical usefulness without violat-
ing its theoretical foundation.

THE CONCEPT OF ACTING OUT: A HISTORICAL REVIEW

In the concept of acting out we distinguish three aspects: one is re-

lated to the predisposition to acting out; the other to the manifestation
of acting' out in behavior; and the third is concerned with the function
of the acting-out mechanism. All three aspects are by no means un-
conditionally interrelated. Acting out, for instance, can occur without
an evidently strong predisposition as dramatically exemplified during
adolescence. Acting-out behavior, then, can be due either to a struc-
tural characteristic of the ego, or it might be stimulated and precipi-
tated by an acute life circumstance such as a therapeutic experience
or a maturational event such as puberty and adolescence. We can
speak of a latent and a manifest aspect of acting out and, furthermore,
of a transient and a habitual kind of acting out.
The predisposition to acting out has been formulated by Fenichcl
(1945), who speaks of an "alloplastic readiness," which appears as the
unique involvement of the acting-out person with the outside world.
The adversary in conflict as well as the source of stabilizing powers is
experienced as external, which in turn keeps the individual in per-
petual and excessive dependency on the outside world. Fenichel, fur-
thermore, alludes to the oral modality of impetuousness and urgency
and to the concomitant features of intense narcissistic needs and intol-
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Acting Out and the Adolescent Process 121

It: follows from the preceding summary that the sense of reality in
the acting-out individual is weak and vague; he easily makes transient
identifications and plays roles. Such facility in changing the self is
often remarkable. Carroll (1951) ascribes this disposition to a rich
fantasy life which exists isolated and by itself, which allows no com-
promise with reality. Adolescents of this type will tell you that their
fantasies are more real than anything in the outer world. They accept,
consequently, the outer world only as far as it gives credence to their
inner reality; they attack it or they turn away from it as soon as the
need gratification it offers ceases to be in immediate and perfect har-
mony with the need tension they experience. This condition is typical
for the adolescent user of drugs.
Let us make more explicit the distinction between the predisposing
factors of acting out and the function of acting out by turning our
attention to the function of acting out as a separate topic. Freud (1905)
originally used the term "acting out" in the case report on the first
adolescent to be analyzed, namely, Dora. In the Postscript to the Dora
case, he referred to her leaving the analysis with these words: "Thus
she acted out an essential part of her recollections and phantasies in-
stead of reproducing them in treatment." In other words, Dora took
her revenge on the man who had deceived and deserted her. We recog-
nize in this acting out the gratification of a hostile, retaliatory wish.
Displacement is the mechanism of defense operative in the acting out
which brought the Dora case to a premature termination.
Again, in 1914, Freud used the term acting out in a paper on tech-
nique, applying it to the analytic situation, especially to transference
and resistance. He said: "We have learnt that the patient repeats in-
stead of remembering, and repeats under the conditions of resistance.
. . . We soon perceive that the transference is itself only a piece of repe-
tition, and that the repetition is a transference of the forgotten past
not only on to the doctor but also on to all the other aspects of the
current situation." These concerns and formulations are intended to
illuminate the analytic situation and they should, therefore, be treated
separately from the acting out as a so-called symptom-or, rather, a
symptom equivalent-which brings many adolescents to our atten-
tion.
Acting out within the therapeutic situation requires constant vigi-
lance and scrutiny as to the extent it can and should be permitted to
122 Peter Bios

take its course or as to the urgency it has to be curbed lest it affects

adversely the adolescent's life and defeats therapy itself. Generally, it
can be stated that acting out in the transference or acting out in the
service of resistance has to be interpreted or otherwise rendered in-
nocuous. However, there exist other kinds of acting out, as we shall
see, which do not require the same measures of interference because
they serve different functions and arc no threat to the therapeutic
alliance.
One further function of acting out has been mentioned by Jacob-
son (1957). The resistance against remembering effected by acting
out constitutes a form of denial. "Acting out," Jacobson says, "appears
to be regularly linked up with a bent for denial." That this persistent
denial goes hand in hand with a distortion of reality is borne out con-
vincingly by patients of this kind. The function of acting out is denial
through action; the magic of' action and of gesture appears in such
cases in great clarity. \Ve touch here on a focal adolescent character-
istic. The adolescent has a need to deny his helplessness through action,
to affirm by exaggeration his independence from the archaic active
mother, to counteract the regressive pull to passivity by denying his
dependence on reality itself. Here, then, we encounter the megalo-
mania of the adolescent who says: "Nobody can tell me," and we wit-
ness the adolescent's trust in the magic of action by which he hopes
to control his destiny. If we succeed in penetrating the restitutive
faS'acle of such defiance, we are bound to discover fantasies barely kept
apart from reality since no stable boundary line between them exists.
Tnclividuals in whom these conditions prevail "equate reality of
thought with external actuality, and wishes with their fulfillment-
with the event ... Hence also the difficulty of distinguishing uncon-
scious phantasies from memories which have become unconscious"
(Freud,1911).
The sense of reality is disturbed in all acting-out individuals. How-
ever, it is the quality of this disturbance which arouses our attention.
We soon discover that outer reality has never been relinquished as the
source of' direct satisfaction on the level of need fulfillment. The ob-
servation that to the acting-out individual the person in relation to
whom acting out is effected plays only a small or no role at all, that one
is easily exchanged for another, is one more proof of the primitive
psychic organization in which acting out is anchored. We recognize
A cting Out and the A dolescent Process 123

in acting out an autoerotic use of the outer world which is always

available for momentary and immediate gratification. This is con-
trary to object-oriented gratification. True object relation requires
the recognition of a self-interest in the other person and can develop
only within the boundaries of compromise and empathy. The acting-
out individual, in contrast, turns to the outer world as a tension-reliev-
ing part object. Viewed in these terms, acting out constitutes an auto-
erotic equivalent. To this Anna Freud (1949) alluded by saying that
"The acting out of fantasies ... is a derivative of phallic masturba-
tion ... its substitute and representative."
The mechanism of projection plays a prominent role in acting out
and easily masks a psychotic process such as an incipient paranoid
state; this is especially true for adolescent cases of acting out. Kanzer
(1957b), who follows similar thinking, expresses an opinion which is
exemplified in one of my clinical illustrations which will follow later.
He says: "This regressive need for immediate object possession is prob-
ably more primary than the motor activity which serves it-relieving
on the one hand castration anxiety and recapturing on a more primi-
tive level the early sense of mastery resul ting from the possession of
the breast." In this sense, then, acting out has a restitutive function
by denying the frustrating limitations of reality, declaring object and
self to be intrinsically one and the same, and proving its concreteness
by repeated affirmation through action. Consequently, acting out is
always ego syntonic. In fact, whenever acting out yields to a recogni-
tion of an ego-alien aspect, then acting out has already passed over into
the realm of symptom formation or has become a symptomatic act.
This change goes hand in hand with a decline of narcissistic needs and
an emergence of differentiated object relations.
One more function of acting out must be mentioned here because
it plays a particularly important role in adolescence. I refer to the
adolescent's need to establish a temporal continuity within the ego.
This continuity can no longer be maintained by proxy, by the simple
reliance on the parents' omniscience, a condition which we might para-
phrase in saying: "Even if I do not understand or remember or know
fully what really happened in the past, my parents do; therefore noth-
ing has been extinguished or lost as long as I continue to remain a
part of them." We know that whenever parents falsify by word or ac-
tion the reality of crucial events, the child experiences a disturbance
124 Peter Bios

in the sense of reality which may lead to a critical impasse during

adolescence. In an attempt to restore the sense of reality we observe
acting-out behavior of all kinds, frequently of an asocial or antisocial
nature. Such cases respond often extremely well to a rediscovery of
the undistorted past. I am inclined to give this fact a weighty signifi-
cance by saying that acting out in the service of re-establishing tem-
poral ego continuity, or, briefly, in the service of the ego, must be dis-
tinguished from those cases of acting out in which instinctual demands
predominate, in which the re-establishment of a oneness with the ob-
ject is sought through the magic control of the external world. Such
a propensity will finally consolidate in the impulsive or narcissistic
personality, while acting out in the service of the ego tends to become
stabilized in the compulsive character. In clinical practice with ado-
lescents, these two types of cases are often difficult to distinguish from
each other; only through the systematic use of the therapeutic situa-
tion can a differentiation be established in time.

ACTING OUT: A PHASE-SPECIFIC MECHANISM OF ADOLESCENCE

The concept of acting out has been discussed in its various aspects:
predisposing, manifest, and functional; its complexity has been made
explicit. I shall now turn to the question: what are the unique charac-
teristics of the adolescent process that facilitate acting out; or, in other
words, is adolescent acting out determined by predisposing factors
alone or can the adolescent process claim acting out as a phase-specific
mechanism? Can we speak of an adolescent compliance in the sense
of a developmental tendency toward meeting halfway certain predis-
positions which at other periods of development were dormant or less
conspicuous? In any case, experience tells us that the incidence of act-
ing out rises sharply when the child enters puberty. This clinical fact
alone clamors for an explanation.
As an avenue toward an understanding of the adolescent proclivity
to acting out, I shall now explore those adolescent developmental
characteristics which accompany psychic restructuring and which by
previous definition have a special relatedness to acting out. This effort
does not require that we retrace the long and intricate pathways of
adolescence; I have told this story in great detail elsewhere (1962).
Instead, I shall single out certain characteristics of adolescence which
have a direct bearing on the subject of acting out.
Acting Out and the Adolescent Process 125

In a broad sense, one can say that the adolescent process proceeds
from a progressive dccathcxis of primary love objects, through a phase
or increased narcissism and autoerotism, to heterosexual object find-
ing. These changes in drive organization are paralleled by shifts in
ego interests and attitudes which attain structural stability during the
period or consolidation at late adolescence. The detachment of psychic
institutions from the parental influence which brought them into be-
ing constitutes a major effort of the adolescent ego; conversely, this
achievement facilitates the definitive formation of the sell'.
The disengagement from the internalized love and hate objects is
accompanied by a profound sense of loss and isolation, by a severe ego
impoverishment which accounts for the adolescent's frantic turn to
the outside world, to sensory stimulation and to activity. The adoles-
cent turns so frantically toward reality because he is in constant danger
of losing it. The protracted process of object displacement opens the
door to repeating essential facets of the past in relation to the current
situation or the immediate environment. As long as these severance
actions last, an astonishing impairment of reality testing-often only
selective-is in evidence. The outside world appears to the adolescent,
at least in certain aspects, like the mirror image of his internal reality,
with its conflicts, threats, and comforts, which is summarily experi-
enced as external. Reality testing, so flagrantly defective during this
process, will be restored only after a turn to nonincestuous love ob-
jects has evolved and after pregenitality has been afforded its place as
forepleasure. This differentiation of drives is accompanied by a hier-
archical rearrangement of ego interests and attitudes.
The proclivity of adolescence to action is one of its most impressive
characteristics. The confluence or several trends is recognizable in
this phenomenon. One is the antithesis of passivity ("being done to")
and activity ("doing to others") which in the early part of adolescence
plays a dominant role when the regressive pull to the active phallic
mother (preoedipal) and the identification with her give the drive
organization or boy and girl its special countenance. Action and mo-
tion are valued as such, not necessarily as goal-directed behavior, but
as means of resisting the regressive pull to the active mother and of
averting the surrender to primal passivity. In this constellation, then,
action assumes the quality or a magic gesture: it averts evil (castra-
tion), it denies passive wishes, and it affirms a delusional control over
12G Pet er Blos

rea li ty. T his tenden cy in conj unction wi th a narcissistic isolation com-

pounds the we ll-k nown m egalomani c trend of th e adolescent who uses
th e ex terna l world for h is aggran di zem ent in th e same way as the ch ild
u sed th e parent for th e gra ti ficat ion of h is n ar cissistic n eeds. In b oth
cases, a su pply of in exhaustible ri ch es- even if on ly im agin ed , n amely,
wishe d for- seems to li e ou tside; a ll th a t r em ains to b e do ne is to keep
t he fl ow of th ese narcissistic su pp lies stea d ily flowin g toward the self.
'The pi ctur e of th e ad olescen t process wo u ld n ot be com ple te wi th-
a li t bri ng ing"to you r a tten tio n one more ge ne ral tr end whic h is perti-
n en t to ou r topic. The adolescen t process, of course, evo lves fro m
pr eceding de velopm ental stages wh ich wer e n ever passed throu gh
with out leaving im pri n ts of tra u ma , arrestments by fixati on, sen sitiza-
ti on s as to selec tive gra tificator y m od ali ties, and lacu n ae in ego con -
tinuity. T h e adolescent pro cess can be accomplish ed on ly throu gh
syn th esizing the past wi th the present an d the anticipa ted futur e. T h e
integ ration of ego and drive orga ni zation s is the touchsto n e of th is
syn thesis. Psychologicall y, th en , th e ad olescent process is constan tly
str iving to bring th e past in to harmony with th e termin al stage of
chi ld hood , with adolescence. Is it surpr ising to find amon ?; th e ways
of r em embering th e one ca lled acti ng ou t? In a very r eal sense, ac ti ng
ou t can serve progressive d evelo pm en l. T o thi s, we refer as adolescen t
ex pe rimen ta tio n wh ich dom in a tes th e scene before tri al actio n in
th ou ght an d pl ay ac tion in fan tasy make it d isp ensabl e.
In th e selective en u rncra tion of adolesce n t characte ri stics, it has
been Illy pu r pose to empha size th e fact th at th e ad olescen t process
contai ns th ose psych ol ogical condi tions wh ich we have com e to rec-
ognize as typical whe never ac ti ng o u t is to occur. We are n o t su r pr ised ,
th er efore, to observ e acting out to be a m ore or less ub iq u itou s phe-
n om en on of adolesce nce. Su ch typ ical ac ting-o ut beh avior is u su all y
tr an sien t, benign, an d in th e ser vice of progre ssive d evelop m ent. H ow-
eve r, any of the componen t aspects of the adole scent process wh ich I
have en umer a ted can lead to an im pa sse, a failur e, an arrestmen t. In
tha t case, the phase-adequ ate mecha n ism of acting out has turn ed in to
a p er m an ent pa th ologica l conditio n . W h ether th is condition is marked
b y con ti nue d acting out or will turn in to a neurotic or some ot h er
illn ess wi ll d ep end on the pred isposin g factors. The tran sient ascen d-
ellCY of ac ting o ut in adolescence can never by it self develop in to a
lasting ac ting -ou t di sorder.
Acting Out and the Adolescent Process 127

I t seems to me that adolescence offers an opportune chance for the

treatment of acting-out propensities which to some extent always rep-
resent phase-specific measures in an effort to cope with the actualities
of growing up. These actualities revolve around object losing and ob-
ject finding which both intertwine in the process of establishing ma-
ture object relations; they revolve around-not necessarily conscious
-remembering and forgetting which intertwine in the process of ego
synthesis. The dialectic tension between these opposites is resolved
in late adolescence by the definite consolidation of the self. The writer
James Baldwin (1956) has put this human condition, epitomized in
adolescence, into these words: "Either, or: it takes strength to remem-
ber, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do
both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain
of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who
forget court another kind of madness, the madness of denial of pain
and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between
madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare."

CLINICAL MATERIAL

The presentation of clinical material on certain acting-out adoles-

cents serves two objectives. On the one hand, the material offers con-
crete evidence of acting out, while at the same time it demonstrates
the intrinsic difficulty of comfortably subordinating the data to the
standard concept of acting out. We are confronted with the dilemma
of either broadening the concept or assigning some clinical facts to
other categories. As a third possibility, we could consider acting out
as a typical transient mechanism of the adolescent process which owes
its prominence to the temporary weakening of inhibitory and repres-
sive forces and, furthermore, to the ascendency of regressive libido
and ego positions.
Adolescent cases of acting out in the service of instinctual gratifi-
cation are well known. Typical of this kind of acting out is the pseudo
heterosexuality in the girl as either a return to the preoedipal mother
via a substitute partner or as a revenge and spiteful action directed
against the oedipal mother. I have described elsewhere (1957) this
kind of acting out which operates in the service of regressive instinc-
tual gratification. We are furthermore well acquainted with those
cases in which the adolescent acts out the unconscious wishes of the
 128 Peter BIos

parent. I have selected clinical material which docs not belong to any
of these categories and which has received only scant attention in the
literature. A paper by Augusta Bannard (1961) marks the exception.
The following case material exemplifies adolescent acting out which
. operates in the service of progressive development or, more specific-
ally, in the service of ego synthesis.

The Case of Frank) the Laborer

This late adolescent boy of nineteen had failed in college during his
freshman year and found himself at a loss what to do with himself
after his dismissal. Lethargy and aimlessness were prominent, as was
a tendency to indulge in sentimental and fairy-storylike fantasies. He
was plagued by indecision and confusion and was unable to make
plans for his future.
Frank was an adopted child. Both his parents had achieved intel-
lectual prominence and outstanding positions. The boy was brought
up in the atmosphere of a cultured home; he had fitted well into this
milieu. All through school, he proved himself able academically; he
was socially competent and at ease; he was active in sports and in
school life; he was liked by his teachers and peers. Due to this history,
his failure in college assumed the dimensions of an inexplicable turn
of events.
After Frank had left college, he started psychotherapy. First he
held several jobs as a white-collar worker until he suddenly decided
to become a laborer. I felt that his urgency to take a laborer's job was
so elemental that I made myself a sympathetic partner of this radical
departure from his accustomed life. I decided to wait and see. Frank
Icl t extremely happy in his new job and he got along well with his
fellow workers. Soon he decided to move away from the comfortable
home of his family in order to live with one of the workers' family in
the grimy section of a large city. He deeply enjoyed the simple pleas-
ures and unsophisticated interests of his new milieu. The acting-out
character in this boy's behavior was evident.
During the time Frank resided in the world of his fellow workers,
it was possible to penetrate his childhood amnesia and bring crucial
memories to consciousness. This was facilitated by the matter-of-fact
familiarity with the new milieu and by associative links which related
the present experience to his past. In having made a change of his
Acting Out and the Adolescent Process 129

milieu, he followed the relentless pull of the infantile object tie to

foster parents: he had lived in a family of working-class people until
he was adopted at the end of his second year. The early reality of his
life became revived during late adolescence and was made conscious
in therapy after it had become triggered off by remembering in action.
Frank became able to recall memories of his early childhood as well
as to re-experience the affection he had felt for his foster parents. The
acting out as a special form of remembering was translated into the
verbalized memories of his past. A gradual disengagement from his
early love objects followed: he was now able to fall in love and experi-
ence the object finding of adolescence proper. As soon as the reliving
of the past became dispensable, Frank returned to his adoptive family.
Freed from the regressive pull to his original milieu, the abrupt sep-
aration from which had been traumatic, Frank returned to college,
studied successfully for a doctorate, and became an equal in intellec-
tual pre-eminence to his parents.
Frank's case invites some comments. First, it should be noted that
no acting out had occurred during the time preceding or during eight
years following his late adolescent crisis. While he had talked about
his past earlier in therapy and while he knew the facts of his back-
ground and remembered some of the circumstances of his early life,
the affective component of his memories came to consciousness only
through the re-enactment of his early history. It seems that the con-
solidation process of late adolescence is hampered, delayed, or actually
aborted whenever crucially significant unintcgrated memories remain
permanently dissociated and resist repression. This by itself prevents
the formation of a temporal continuity in the ego. Without this psy-
chic achievement of late adolescence, the separation from the parent
can only be partial. The adolescent process, i.e., the second individua-
tion process, if not proceeding nonnally, is often frantically simulated
by either a restitution in fantasy or through a determined return to
one's beginnings. These efforts bear the signs of acting out as in the
case of Frank. This adolescent could not go forward without first
making contact with his unassimilated traumatic past in a desperate
effort at integrating it. His acting out was in the service of progressive
development. We are reminded of the giant Antaios, the son of Posei-
don and Caea, the Earth. Antaios proved to be invincible because
each time he was thrown in combat, he rose with greater strength due
130 Peter Blos

to having touched the earth, his mother. Heraklcs defeated him by

lifting him off the ground and holding him in midair. Thus, disrupt-
ing the giant's contact with his origin, the source of his strength, he
crushed Antaios to death.

The Case of Carl) the Criminal

We are all familiar with adolescent cases in which acting out is
related to a family myth. By this, I mean a willful distortion of facts
concerning the family history. This type of case in which identity
confusion, irnpostcrlikc, or delinquent behavior often happen to be
the major symptoms differs radically in structure from those cases of
delinquency in which the outside world becomes distorted through
the projection of an intrapsychic conflict. In both instances, an intra-
psychic event is experienced as external, but with the crucial differ-
ence that in one case the external world is distorted by authority fig-
lues in the environment who as the guardians of reality must inter-
pret the world o[ [acts to the child, while in the other case the child
himself distorts reality for the sake of drive satisfaction. In one in-
stance, adolescent deviancy operates in the service of the rectification
or a myth or a lie, while, in the other, a myth or a lie is to be created
in order to fit reality to instinctual needs.
Tn order to illustrate these remarks, I shall present the case of Carl.
This fifteen-year-old boy was brought to treatment by a relative who
had become worried about Carl's criminal tendencies. Stealing, for-
gery, truancy, and lying were the presenting symptoms. All four kinds
of infractions were usually executed in a manner that invited detec-
tion. The driving urgency in the boy's behavior, in conjunction with
his sense of being fated for a criminal career, gave his delinquency
the special countenance of acting out. The onset of puberty marked
the onset of Carl's delinquent behavior.
The family myth, the willful distortion of the family history, be-
came known through the information provided by the relative. Carl
and his brother, his senior by three years, had been told by their
mother that their father was dead. After a divorce when Carl was three
and a half years old, the father was later convicted for embezzlement
and sent to prison when the child was six. Defore this event, the fa-
ther had lost contact with his children who had not seen h im for two
years. According to the mother's story, the father had died in prison
A ciing Out and the A dolesccnt Process

and she was a widow. The children, aged six and nine respectively,
accepted the news abou t their father's death without a question, and
they behaved as if it were true. Nobody spoke of the father at home
except to compare Carl's "crooked little mind" with that of his dead
father. Actually, the father had not died. A psychotic condition which
rendered him intractable in prison and which proved to be chronic
made his transfer to a hospital for the criminally insane necessary.
At the time Carl started treatment, his father was an inmate of this
prison hospi tal.
It did not appear strange at all to this boy that he knew no rela-
tions on his father's side, that he did not know the date or cause of his
father's death or the place where he was buried, that he knew neither
the circumstances of his crime nor the reasons for his parents' divorce.
No wonder this boy complained about a strange incapacity to study
history because he was unable to remember dates, names, and places.
In order to dispose of an impenetrable confusion, Carl himself in-
sisted that his father had died shortly after his birth and that he had
never known him. Unconsciously, Carl had obeyed a gestured com-
mand which he remembered in treatment: "One day an uncle of mine
came to the house and tore my father out of every family picture."
The correctness of this memory was later confirmed.
The function of Carl's acting out can be stated as an attempt at
keeping the memory of his father alive, as a vindication of the "good
father," and as an extension of the temporal continuity of the ego into
the dim regions of his early life. The father image was essential as a
hold on reality and as a protection against depressive moods. Further-
more, the sense of reality could be sustained only by denying in action
the mother's imputed unrealness of the child's perceptions and of their
traces embedded in his memory. What Carl remembered about his
early childhood were forbidden memories, especially in relation to
affectionate and positive feelings toward the father. They had become
extinguished as conscious memories by the same stroke of the mother's
wrath and vindictiveness with which she had murdered the father.
Carl's adolescence was fatally threatened by his submission to the ar-
chaic sorceress mother. This meant the abandonment of the father
image with which he had to come to terms at adolescence, positively
and negatively, through identification and counteridentification.
It: was obvious that the dead father had to be unearthed and that
1!l2 Peter Blos

the past history had to be revived and rectified before the delinquent
aspect of acting out would subside. The proclivity to acting out proved
only partly reversible; however, the employment of this tendency to
bring about the inescapable fate of becoming a criminal was success-
fully averted by therapy. Carl's visit to his father at the prison hospital
was followed by a compassionate concern about him. The boy wanted
to send money to his father in order to ease his life and have him more
respectably dressed. I-Ie conjectured that his father was mute because
he was angry since nobody ever visited him or cared. He realized grad-
ually how much he had missed his father and he became aware of his
behaving to older men as if they were fathers who might take an inter-
est in him. At such times, he became demanding and almost expected
a restitution from the environment for having been denied the right-
ful possession of his own father.
A complicating factor in this case must be mentioned because it
contributed to the acting out, especially the stealing. Carl had an un-
descended testicle. This condition, which had been neglected, was
operatively corrected early in treatment. The operation unfortunately
served only a cosmetic purpose since the testicle had ceased to Iunc-
tion. Carl, who made his own observations on the comparative size
and sensation of his testicles, was informed about the true state of
affairs. Before the clarification of his genital status, Carl's stealing con-
tained a kleptomanic component, namely, a magic attempt at bringing
about genital intactness. Through stealing, then, he symbolically re-
stored his masculinity and, conversely, defended himself against fem-
inine strivings, namely, against homosexuality.
As always in cases wherein a family myth plays a pathogenic role,
the rectification of the myth hardly comes as a surprise to the patient.
So it was also with Carl: the parts of the puzzle which were always
known to him in dissociated bits and pieces were gradually and labori-
ously fitted together into a coherent and meaningful whole. Carl re-
called the "fancy apartment" he lived in when the family was once
rich and he recognized in his desire for expensive living a lingering
memory of those days. When he toppled on the verge of stealing again
because he needed money in order to rent a chauffeur-driven Cadillac
for an evening with his girl friend, he recalled that his father had
actually driven a Cadillac in the company of strange women and girls.
After his parents had separated, his father used to take him out in a
Acting Out and the Adolescent Process

big car. Carl's irrepressible desire to dress ostentatiously often drove

him to stealing either money or merchandise, until he recognized in
his own behavior the image of his father who was a fastidious dresser.
After Carl had succumbed to another stealing episode, he explained
to the therapist that he was hopelessly compelled to spend money on
his girl friend. Fragments of memories and overheard conversations
pieced themselves together into the recollection that his father was a
lavish spender and entertainer of chorus girls. He began to notice at
his home some expensive china, glassware, and bric-a-brac as the tan-
gible remembrances of a past come to life and telling its story.
The acting out in Carl's case was repeatedly followed by remem-
bering and experiencing particular affective and sensual states. The
cumulative effect of this cyclic process became recognizable in the
novel ability to employ trial action in thought and fantasy, as well as
verbalized thought whenever the urge to act out arose. This alerting
awareness attested to the ascendency of the self-observing, i.e., intro-
spective, ego which in turn strengthened both secondary-process think-
ing and reality testing. Acting out in terms of a maladaptive attempt
at establishing temporal continuity in the ego gradually lost its gen-
uine character and laid bare the fixation points of instinctual develop-
ment. Symptom formation and the defensive nature of action now
occupied the center of the clinical picture. Carl's passive tendencies
intensified by his genital defectiveness were overcompensated by ac-
tion. Action per se had become identical with an affirmation of mascu-
linity. This second phase in the treatment of this acting-out case lies
ou tsidc the scope of our special interest.
The acting out and remembering in Carl's case invite the Proustian
image of Swann rediscovering "forgotten years, gardens, people in the
taste of a sip of tea in which he found a piece of a madeleine" (From
a letter by Proust to Antoine Bibesco, November 1912). Acting out,
then, is the establishment of that particular experiential congruence
by which present reality provides a link to a traumatic past; in this
sense, acting out is an alloplastic, maladaptive, restitutive process. The
fact that acting out constitutes an organized psychic operation sets it
off sharply from impulsive action, typical of the impulse disorders.
Instead of an organized pattern, impulsive action is marked by a primi-
tive mechanism of tension discharge to which Michaels (1958) has
referred as "primary acting out."
134 Peter Bios

Let us return once more to the adolescent condition. The adoles-

cent's proclivity to action is obvious. It furthermore becomes appar-
ent in the treatment of some acting-out adolescents that acting out is
not an integral component of the personality and, once overcome,
shows no further traces in the behavior of the adult. In other cases,
it proves to remain a habitual reaction to tension and thus reveals its
predispositional component. Acting out per se cannot be considered
an insurmountable obstacle to treatment in adolescence, since it rep-
resents in its genuine adolescent form a phase-specific mechanism of
the adolescent process.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The adolescent's proclivity to action seems to me determined by

two factors. First, we have to consider the fact that with the quantita-
tive increase of instinctual pressure due to puberty, earlier drive and
ego positions are regressively revived. The first and oldest antithesis
in individual life, the one of active and passive, can be discerned
again at adolescence. The early active position which came into ex-
istence through an identification with the preoedipal phallic (active)
mother serves, especially during the beginning stages of adolescence,
as a defensive bulwark against regression to primal passivity. This
defensive measure against passivity becomes manifest during adoles-
cence in unrestrained, inappropriate, and self-assertive actions. Sec-
ond, the delibidinization of infantile love objects during the phase of
adolescence proper, and the increase in narcissism during the phase of
early adolescence, both result in an impoverishment of the ego. The
threat of ego loss which accompanies this process is counteracted by a
forceful turn to the outer world. Outer reality offers a restitutive
anchorage before stable object relations are again established.
These two sources just described contribute to the dire need for
action which is so typical of the adolescent process. Of course, we are
equally familiar with the adolescent's inertia, lethargy, and aversion
to action 'which only highlight the defensive quality of activity in the
cyclic sequence of these states. In contrast to the typical adolescent
break-through of instinctual drives, sexual and aggressive, and their
random discharge in action, we come to realize that acting out repre-
sents a structured and organized mechanism.
Genuine adolescent acting out implies a fixation on either the phase
A cting Out and the A dolescent Process 135

of preadolescence or early adolescence. Both these phases are charac-

terized by a strong regressive pull, by a revival of pregenitality, by an
increase in narcissism, and by the maintenance of a bisexual identity.
It goes without saying that these conditions affect adversely the ego's
relation to reality. This latent predisposition will assume flagrant pro-
portions under the impact of puberty whenever a defective sense of
reality as well as a need for oneness with the object (i.e., with the outer
world) existed before adolescence. The fact that both cases of acting
out in the service of ego synthesis which I have reported have in com-
mon the loss of a significant object in early childhood suggests that
similar cases might show a similar etiology.
Whenever acting out is in evidence we assume that an organized
mechanism is in operation, not merely a discharge device of instinctual
needs. This postulated organization appears in three distinctly differ-
ent forms which are familiar to us from their clinical manifestations:
(1) the repetition of an early object relation and of its gratificatory
modality by displacement; (2) the activation of a fantasy and its articu-
lation on the environment, in which case acting out appears as an
autoerotic equivalent; (3) the effort at restoring the sense of reality
by affirming memories in action which were denied, forbidden, or
distorted by the environment during childhood. To the latter, I refer
as acting out in the service of ego synthesis.
While acting out is generally alloplastic and maladaptive, the dis-
tinctions which I suggest seem essential in terms of a differentiated
treatment approach. In cases of adolescent acting out as an attempt at
reviving partly abandoned object relations or drive gratifications by
their displacement onto the outer world, treatment initially focuses on
an increase in tension toleration, on internalization, and on a clearer
differentiation between ego and reality, between self and object. This
phase in treatment, then, aims at the establishment of an ego organi-
zation which is capable of integrating the second, namely, interpreta-
tive and reconstructive, phase of treatment. In the case of acting out
in the service of ego synthesis, treatment initially focuses on the re-
construction of the dissociated, traumatic past, and secondarily assists
the ego in the task of mastering anxiety and of integrating affects which
follow in the wake of the confrontation with the historical truth. The
various types of acting out can rarely be categorized as neatly as I have
outlined them here for the sake of theoretical clarity but are usually
 Pete1' Blos

mixed and require that therapy maneuver between a changing em-

phasis on one or the other.
Acting out as a tension regulator protects the psychic organism
against conflictual anxiety: the conflict is exclusively between the ego
and the outer world. On the other hand, acting out in the service of
the ego, of ego synthesis, or of temporal ego continuity protects the
psychic organism against anxiety deriving from structural defective-
ness or disintegration. Structural anxiety arises as a consequence of
ego lacunae or whenever the sense of reality is in danger of coming
to ruin during adolescence. At this period, the borrowed strength or
ego restitution through continued dependency on the parent is no
longer desirable or tolerable lest progressive development be aban-
doned altogether. If this should occur, we witness the case of an abor-
tive adolescence.
The problem of adolescent acting out-its genetic, dynamic, and
structural distinctness, clarity, and differentiation-is obscured by
several trends which are constituent parts of the adolescent process.
We have seen that acting out at adolescence is the result of several
confluent trends: predispositional, developmental, and functional.
The nature of the adolescent process itself tends to blur the clear de-
lineation of the concept within the clinical picture. This difficulty
stems mainly from four adolescent characteristics: from the alterna-
tion between regressive and progressive movements, from the role of
displacement in the process of disengagement from early love objects,
from the frantic turn to the outside world in order to compensate for
ego impoverishment, and from the efforts at ego synthesis which is
the structural achievement of late adolescence. The relation of these
adolescent factors to acting out has only partly been elucidated. How-
ever, their relevancy to our problem has become apparent; further-
more, a reconsideration of the standard concept of acting out has pre-
sented itself as desirable if the phenomena of adolescence arc to be
accommodated within its framework.

i!
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