Talk:Passage to the act

Let me now generate the detailed outlines for the remaining three concepts.

1. **OUTLINE II: ACTING-OUT (German: *Agieren*)**

- Unheaded Opening/Lead**

In Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, *acting-out* (German: *Agieren*, French: *mise en acte*) designates a dramatic, staged repetition of unconscious material that occurs within the transferential relationship, especially within the analytic session itself. Distinguished from the act proper (*l'acte*), which transforms the subject's symbolic position, and from passage to the act (*passage à l'acte*), which represents a collapse of symbolic mediation, acting-out names a form of communication directed at the Other—a message that the subject enacts rather than articulates in words. Lacan inherits the term from Freud's clinical vocabulary, where *Agieren* refers to the patient's tendency to *re-live* unconscious conflicts in action rather than to remember them. The concept becomes particularly important in Lacanian theory through Seminar X: *Anxiety* (1962-63) and Seminar XI: *The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis* (1964), where Lacan systematically distinguishes acting-out from other phenomena—symptom formation, passage to the act, repetition, and the authentic act. Acting-out remains interpretable within the symbolic field, carries an enigmatic message for the Other, and represents a fundamental communication within the analytic frame. Understanding acting-out is clinically essential for recognizing when symbolic intervention is called for, and theoretically crucial for grasping how the subject negotiates desire within the transference.

Historical Development and Genealogy

Freudian Antecedents and "Agieren"

Freud introduces the term *Agieren* in his 1914 paper "Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through," where he contrasts the patient's capacity to remember (*erinnern*) with their tendency to act out (*agieren*) repressed material. In Freud's formulation, the patient's unconscious wishes and fantasies emerge not as coherent memories but as actions: "the patient acts it before us, as it were, instead of reporting it to us" (*der Patient agiert es vor uns ab, sozusagen, statt es zu berichten*). This acting-out occurs especially in the transference, where the patient re-enacts past conflictual situations with the analyst rather than bringing them to consciousness through speech.

Freud's early technical papers on therapy emphasize the problem posed by acting-out: the patient, in the grip of unconscious impulses, performs actions that both express and avoid symbolic elaboration. Symptoms, dreams, and parapraxes are formations that allow the unconscious to express itself through meaning-structures (however distorted); acting-out, by contrast, seems to bypass meaning altogether and lodge itself in the motor and behavioral register. Acting-out often displays what Freud calls an "impulsive aspect" (*Impulsivität*)—a quality of immediacy and relative isolation from the subject's ordinary motivational patterns that makes it recognizable as foreign to conscious intention.

Freud's concern is primarily technical: the patient who acts out in the analysis (or, more troublingly, outside the session during treatment) "satisfies his repressed instincts to the limit"—meaning the unconscious wish reaches gratification in action rather than being subject to interpretation and working-through. This represents a short-circuit in the analytic process. Yet Freud also recognizes that acting-out, paradoxically, may be necessary: the subject cannot always simply remember; they must sometimes re-live or re-enact in order to bring the material into the realm where analysis can address it.

Freud's Technical Handling and the Problem of the Transference

Freud distinguishes between acting-out that occurs within the transference (transferential acting-out, or repetition in the transference) and acting-out that occurs outside the analysis proper. He notes that acting-out can extend beyond the transference: "We must be prepared to find that the patient yields to the compulsion to repeat, which now replaces the compulsion to remember, not only in his personal attitude to his doctor but also in every other activity and relationship which may occupy his life at the time."

The ambiguity here is crucial: Freud sometimes treats transference itself as a form of acting-out, yet he also seems to distinguish between transference-repetition (which is analyzable and potentially productive) and acting-out proper (which is often resistant). This unresolved tension in Freud's own work—what Laplanche and Pontalis call "an ambiguity that is actually intrinsic to Freud's thinking"—becomes a central point for Lacan's systematic reformulation.

Lacan's Reworking: Seminar X and XI

Lacan takes the Freudian term and restructures it within his theory of the subject, language, and the Real. In Seminar X: *Anxiety* (1962-63), he introduces a rigorous distinction between three phenomena that Freud and earlier analysts had often conflated:

1. **Acting-out** (*mise en acte*): A dramatic action staged for the Other, remaining within the symbolic field, carrying an enigmatic message. 2. **Passage to the act** (*passage à l'acte*): An abrupt exit from the symbolic scene, a fall into the Real, a collapse of meaning. 3. **The Act proper** (*l'acte*): A structural transformation that the subject assumes, without guarantee from the Other.

In Seminar XI: *The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis* (1964), Lacan further elaborates acting-out in relation to transference, repetition, and the drive. Bruce Fink, commenting on Seminar XI, emphasizes that Lacan's innovation consists in recognizing that acting-out "takes place on the stage of the Other," whereas passage to the act involves a "fall off that stage"—the subject ceases to be a speaking being.

Theoretical Definition and Structure

Acting-Out as Address and Message

For Lacan, acting-out is fundamentally characterized by its quality of address. Unlike a symptom, which the subject may not recognize as their own, or a passage to the act, which is not directed at anyone, acting-out is a message—an enigmatic communication to the big Other (often incarnated in the analyst). The subject enacts something rather than saying it; yet the enactment is staged *for* an audience.

Key features of acting-out include:

**Demonstrative quality**: The action is performed as if to show or prove something. Example: A patient leaves a provocative object in the analyst's mailbox, or misses sessions following a particular interpretation, or acts aggressively toward family members during treatment. These actions demonstrate or illustrate something that has not yet been articulated.

**Enigmatic character**: What is enacted is not immediately interpretable. The subject themselves often cannot explain why they have done it. It carries meaning, but meaning that resists direct articulation.

**Remains within the scene**: Unlike passage to the act, acting-out does not involve a radical exit from the situation. The subject remains present, remains a speaking being (or at least capable of being one). The action is performed within or in relation to the analytic frame.

**Interpretable**: Because it remains within the symbolic field, acting-out can be interpreted. The analyst can work with it, trace its connections to earlier experiences, and gradually help the subject articulate what the action was attempting to communicate.

**Demand for interpretation**: Acting-out can be understood as a distress signal, a sign that something in the analysis is stuck or that the analysand cannot yet put into words. It invites the analyst's intervention.

Acting-Out and Repetition

The relationship between acting-out and repetition is complex. Lacan, following Freud, recognizes that acting-out is a mode of repetition—the subject repeats in action a past conflictual situation rather than recollecting it. Yet not all repetition is acting-out. The *compulsion to repeat* (*Wiederholungszwang*) operates at a deeper level, tied to the death drive and the unconscious structures of the psyche. Acting-out is a particular form in which repetition appears within the transference—it is repetition that is staged, performed, directed at the Other.

Lacan emphasizes that interpretation and working-through must eventually bring the analysand to a point where they can remember rather than repeat—where the past becomes articulate in speech rather than being re-enacted in behavior. Yet the path to this articulation often passes through phases where acting-out is prominent.

Acting-Out and the Transference

Acting-out is intimately bound up with the transference. In fact, Freud's discussion of acting-out and transference are often difficult to separate, and Lacan's major contribution is to clarify their relationship. Lacan stresses that the transference creates the conditions in which acting-out becomes possible—and also necessary. The analysand, suspended in the transference as the subject-supposed-to-know, develops an intense transferential relationship to the analyst in which past figures and conflicts are re-awakened. Acting-out is often a way of manifesting this transference when it has not yet been interpreted or integrated into verbal analysis.

The analyst must be careful not to condemn acting-out as mere resistance or acting-out to be suppressed. Rather, it represents material that is trying to emerge, even if in distorted form. The analyst's task is to recognize acting-out as a sign that something requires attention, and then to work toward bringing it into the symbolic order where it can be analyzed.

Distinguished from Passage to the Act

This distinction is clinical and theoretical. Acting-out is characterized by: - Remaining in the scene - Address to the Other - Interpretability within meaning

Passage to the act is characterized by: - Exit from the scene entirely - No message, no address - Non-interpretability; collapse of meaning

A patient who acts out might, for example, become verbally abusive or dismissive during a session, or deliberately miss sessions after a certain interpretation. They remain present, remain a speaking being, and their action can be addressed. A patient in passage to the act might, by contrast, suddenly attempt suicide, flee the country, or suffer a violent psychotic episode—their action represents an attempt to escape an unbearable situation, not a communication to the Other.

Acting-Out and Symptom

Acting-out differs from symptom formation, though both involve unconscious material emerging in distorted form. A symptom is often a compromise formation—the product of a conflict between repressed wish and defensive force. A symptom is, in a sense, the subject's unconscious solution to an internal problem; the subject bears it, suffers from it, but may not recognize its intentionality.

Acting-out, by contrast, is enacted. It has a more directly performative quality. Moreover, symptoms typically have a fixedness, a repetitive character that persists over time. Acting-out is often more episodic, more clearly linked to particular moments in the analysis or to specific transferential configurations.

Clinical and Technical Dimensions

Recognition of Acting-Out

How does the analyst recognize that what is occurring is acting-out rather than some other phenomenon? Key indicators include:

**Impulsive quality**: The action seems to come abruptly, not fully motivated by conscious intention.
**Relation to transference**: The acting-out typically correlates with intensification or particular turns in the transference.
**Relation to interpretation**: Often, acting-out emerges after an interpretation that has touched a sensitive point. The analysand cannot yet integrate or verbalize the interpretation, so they express their response through action.
**Enigmatic character**: The analysand themselves is often puzzled by their own action. They cannot fully explain it.
**Directed at the Other**: The action is not random; it has a quality of demonstration or communication to the analyst or to others in the analysand's life who represent transferential figures.

Technical Handling

Once acting-out is recognized, how should the analyst respond? Lacan's position, following Freud but with important modifications, includes:

- 1. Avoid Condemnation or Suppression**

The analyst should not treat acting-out as a regrettable deviation or impediment to the "real work" of analysis. Rather, acting-out is itself a form of communication that requires deciphering. Condemning it or trying to suppress it through injunctions or moral pressure may only reinforce the analysand's defenses.

- 2. Interpret and Trace Connections**

The analyst works toward articulating what the acting-out is expressing. What past situations does it echo? What does it say about the analysand's position vis-à-vis the analyst? What desire or anxiety is it manifesting? Through interpretation, the analyst helps bring the unconscious material into symbolic form.

- 3. Set Limits Carefully**

This is a delicate matter. In some cases, certain forms of acting-out may threaten the integrity of the analysis itself (e.g., if the analysand is acting-out in ways that constitute abuse toward the analyst, or if they are acting-out in ways that pose danger). In such cases, the analyst may need to set limits. However, Fink and others caution that such limit-setting must be done carefully, lest the analyst be identified with a superego figure who is simply repressing the analysand's impulses.

- 4. Use Acting-Out as Material for Analysis**

Rather than trying to prevent acting-out, the analyst can use its occurrence as an opportunity for deepening analysis. The acting-out is a window onto the analysand's unconscious structures, defenses, and desires. By working with it—interpreting it, connecting it to earlier material—the analyst can help the analysand integrate what has been acted out into symbolic understanding.

In Different Diagnostic Structures

- In Neurosis**

Hysteria is classically associated with dramatic acting-out. The hysteric tends to communicate through bodily symptoms, theatrical gestures, and enacted scenes rather than through direct speech. The hysteric's question itself—"Why am I suffering?"—often takes the form of an enacted demonstration rather than a verbal interrogation. Acting-out is thus a characteristic mode of expression for the hysteric.

In obsessional neurosis, acting-out may take a different form—it might manifest as ritualistic repetitive behaviors or as carefully staged scenes that demonstrate the obsessional's particular dilemmas.

- In Psychosis**

In psychotic structures, acting-out must be distinguished more carefully from passage to the act, since the subject's symbolic anchoring is already compromised. What appears to be acting-out in a neurotic patient might, in a psychotic patient, be closer to passage to the act. The analyst must be alert to this distinction.

- In Perversion**

The pervert often uses acting-out strategically, staging scenes designed to complete the Other or to satisfy the Other's jouissance. The pervert's acting-out tends to be more elaborately choreographed than the neurotic's; it has an aesthetic dimension.

Countertransference and the Analyst's Position

An important clinical note: the analyst's response to acting-out can itself become problematic if not monitored. If the analyst identifies with a superego figure—if the analyst condemns or punishes acting-out—then the analysand may act out further in order to provoke this response. Conversely, if the analyst is seduced by or identifies with the content of the acting-out, the analyst loses the analytic position. The analyst must maintain a position of engaged neutrality, recognizing the acting-out without either condemning it or being drawn into the scenario it enacts.

Examples and Illustrations

Classical Freudian Cases

- Ernst Kris's "Fresh Brains Man"**: An academic patient who feared plagiarizing others' ideas. After Kris offered an accurate interpretation assuring the patient that he was not in fact plagiarizing, the patient then acted out by seeking out restaurants serving fresh brains. Lacan discusses this case at length, arguing that Kris's interpretation, while accurate at one level, had suffocated the patient's desire. The patient's acting-out—seeking fresh brains—was an attempt to preserve a desire that the analyst's interpretation had threatened to annul. This example illustrates how acting-out can represent a resistance to interpretation that is itself meaningful and requires further analytic work.

- Freud's Dora Case**: Dora's analysis is marked by various forms of acting-out. She acts out her transferential feelings toward Freud through silences, absences, and finally through her withdrawal from the analysis itself. While Freud interprets some of these actions, Lacan suggests that Freud ultimately misses the central acting-out—Dora's fundamental position as a subject caught between her father's desire and Herr K.'s advances, a position she enacts through her own dramatic gestures.

Clinical Vignettes

- The Patient Who Leaves Objects**: A analysand deliberately leaves a provocative object (e.g., a piece of torn clothing, a photograph) in the analyst's office or mailbox. This action demonstrates something—perhaps anger, desire for the analyst's attention, or an attempt to intrude into the analyst's life. The action is not random; it carries meaning. Yet the analysand may claim not to know why they did it, or may offer only partial explanations. The analyst works to interpret what is being demonstrated through this acting-out.

- The Patient Who Enacts Role Changes**: An analysand who has been presenting themselves to the analyst in a particular way (e.g., as compliant, as struggling, as rational) suddenly acts out a different identity—becoming defiant, acting impulsively, or displaying emotions they have previously repressed. This shift is often a response to something in the analysis (an interpretation, a change in the analyst's demeanor, a particular session's content). The acting-out is an attempt to show the analyst something about themselves that they could not articulate.

- The Patient Who Repeats in External Relationships**: During the analysis, an analysand may suddenly change their behavior in external relationships. They may, for example, suddenly become confrontational with a family member or romantic partner in a way that echoes a dynamic with the analyst. This acting-out in the external world remains connected to the transference; it is a displacement of the transference onto other figures.

Post-Lacanian Elaborations

Lacanian Clinic and Acting-Out

Later Lacanian clinicians have developed refined understandings of acting-out in the clinical setting. The emphasis remains on recognizing acting-out not as a failure of analysis but as a form of communication. Some schools of Lacanian analysis have developed specific technical approaches to handling acting-out, including:

Recognizing when scansion (the analyst's cut, the ending of sessions) might be precipitating acting-out, and using this as analytical material.
Paying attention to the *timing* of acting-out—what triggers it in the analysand's temporal experience.
Using the analysand's acting-out as a way to access the fundamental fantasy and the object *a* that structures the analysand's desire.

Contemporary Variations

In contemporary Lacanian-influenced psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, the understanding of acting-out has been extended to include:

**Acting-out in virtual/digital contexts**: With the rise of digital communication, new forms of acting-out have emerged. An analysand might act out through emails to the analyst, posts on social media, or digital communications that echo or displace transference dynamics.

**Acting-out in institutional contexts**: Beyond the individual analysis, acting-out can be understood in terms of institutional and organizational dynamics. Subjects act out group dynamics and organizational conflicts rather than articulating them verbally.

**Acting-out and social protest**: Some contemporary theorists have extended the category of acting-out to social and political contexts, where collectivities enact social conflicts rather than articulating them through deliberation.

Reception and Debates

Frequency and Inevitability

A central question in Lacanian circles concerns the frequency and inevitability of acting-out. Is acting-out an inevitable phase in analysis? Can it be avoided? Should it be prevented? Opinions vary:

**Some argue** that acting-out is inevitable—the transference will necessarily produce moments where the analysand cannot articulate their experience and must enact it instead.

**Others suggest** that skillful analytic work can minimize acting-out by maintaining appropriate interpretation and handling of transference.

**Still others propose** that the goal is not to eliminate acting-out but to work with it as material that deepens the analysis.

Distinction from Passage to the Act

A recurrent debate concerns how strictly or flexibly to maintain the distinction between acting-out and passage to the act. Some clinicians argue for a sharp distinction; others suggest that the boundary is sometimes blurry, especially in complex clinical situations (e.g., in work with psychotic or borderline structures).

Ethical Implications

An important issue: when the analysand acts out through actions that harm themselves or others (violence, sexual acting-out, self-harm), does the analyst have a responsibility to intervene? Or is interpretation the only ethical tool? This question touches on fundamental issues of clinical ethics and the analyst's responsibility.

Key Texts and Primary Sources

**Freud, Sigmund**. "Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through" (1914). In *The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud*, vol. 12.
**Freud, Sigmund**. *The Psychopathology of Everyday Life* (1901).
**Lacan, Jacques**. *Le Séminaire, Livre X: L'Angoisse* (1962-63). Unpublished; available in partial French transcripts and selected English translations.
**Lacan, Jacques**. *Le Séminaire, Livre XI: Les Quatre Concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse* (1964). Éditions du Seuil, 1973.
**Laplanche, Jean, and Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand**. *The Language of Psychoanalysis* (1967). Entry: "Acting Out."

Secondary Literature

**Evans, Dylan**. *An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis*. Routledge, 1996. (Entries: "Acting Out," "Passage à l'acte," "Transference.")
**Fink, Bruce**. *Reading Seminar XI: Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis*. Edited by Feldstein, Fink, and Jaanus. Routledge, 1995.
**Fink, Bruce**. *A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique*. Harvard University Press, 1997.
**Nobus, Dany**. *Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis*. Routledge, 1998.
**Feldstein, Richard, Fink, Bruce, and Jaanus, Maire**, eds. *Reading Seminar XI: Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis*. SUNY Press, 1995.

References

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Notes

This outline is designed for expansion into a full encyclopedia article of 2,500-3,500 words, with detailed case examples, clinical illustrations, and extensive engagement with secondary Lacanian literature.

Historical Development

Freud and Behavioral Action

Freud's metapsychology includes action as a basic component of psychic apparatus functioning. In *The Interpretation of Dreams* and later metapsychological papers, Freud discusses the motor apparatus (*Motilität*) as one pathway through which the unconscious expresses itself. Unlike representation or affect, motor action represents a final common pathway where psychic content becomes observable behavior.

However, Freud's interest is not in action as such (as behavioral psychology might study it), but in the *meanings* expressed through action. Symptoms are actions; parapraxes are actions; acting-out is action. What makes these psychoanalytically significant is not that they are behaviors but that they express unconscious wishes, conflicts, and defenses.

Lacan's Critique of Behavioral and Ego-Psychological Approaches

Lacan develops the distinction between *agir* and *acte* partly as a critique of approaches (particularly American ego psychology) that treat action as something the ego does—that is, as voluntary, intentional behavior reflecting conscious desires and realistic adaptation to the environment. Ego psychology, in this view, tends to treat successful action as a sign of ego strength, and to frame analysis as fostering more adaptive, functional behavior.

Lacan's position is radically different. For Lacan, ordinary action, no matter how successful or adaptive it appears, does not necessarily represent analytic progress or authentic subjective transformation. An analysand might leave a destructive job, enter a new relationship, or make other ostensibly positive life changes, yet remain trapped in the same fundamental fantasy and desire-structure. Conversely, the analysand might remain outwardly unchanged in their actions while undergoing profound subjective transformation in their relation to those actions.

This critique becomes particularly sharp in Lacan's *Direction of the Treatment* (1958), where he explicitly rejects ego-psychological models that emphasize adaptation and behavior change as the goal of analysis.

Lacan and the Symbolic Order

A key dimension of Lacan's thinking about action involves the subject's relationship to the symbolic order. All ordinary action, in this view, takes place within the symbolic order—within language, law, and social institutions. When someone acts, they do so within a pre-existing framework of possibilities, rules, and meanings that structure what actions are possible and interpretable.

Action, in this sense, is fundamentally *regulated* by the symbolic order. A person can marry (an action deeply regulated by law and social norms), can work (within institutions and markets), can love, can speak—all within frameworks that pre-exist them and that structure what these actions mean. The subject can be more or less adaptively related to these frameworks, more or less successfully navigating them, but the fundamental structure remains: action occurs *within* the symbolic.

The Act, by contrast, breaks with this framework. It creates new symbolic coordinates rather than merely operating within existing ones.

Theoretical Definition and Structure

Ordinary Action as Regulated by the Symbolic

Ordinary action (*agir*) can be characterized as follows:

**Within the symbolic order**: The subject acts according to established meanings, rules, and possibilities.
**Reversible**: Unlike the Act, which is irreversible, ordinary action can be undone, compensated for, or supplemented by further action.
**Intentional at the ego level**: The subject consciously intends the action, even if unconscious forces also motivate it.
**Does not transform subjective position**: The subject's fundamental relation to desire, fantasy, and the Other remains unchanged.
**May express or obscure desire**: An action may seem to fulfill an expressed desire (getting a job one applied for) yet leave the deeper structure of desire-formation untouched.

Examples of ordinary action:

Making love (within the context of an established relationship or sexual encounter)
Quitting a job
Moving to a new city
Entering a marriage or partnership
Changing careers
Traveling
Daily routine behaviors

Symptomatic Action

A special category of action is symptomatic action—behavior that, while appearing to be the subject's deliberate choice, actually expresses neurotic compromise formation or defensive avoidance. A subject might repeatedly sabotage promising opportunities (missing interviews, self-handicapping, withdrawing from relationships), thereby *acting out* a deeper belief about their own inadequacy or a defense against success. Symptomatic action has a repetitive, compulsive quality; it does not achieve what the subject consciously intends.

The distinction between ordinary action and symptomatic action is not always sharp. Many of the subject's ordinary actions carry symptomatic dimensions. The analyst's work often involves helping the analysand recognize how their ordinary actions are determined by unconscious factors—how, for instance, their choice of romantic partners repeatedly enacts the same fantasy, or how their career trajectory mysteriously reproduces their family dynamics.

Action vs. Conduct (conduite)

In French psychoanalytic usage, a distinction is sometimes made between *agir* (action, act, doing) and *conduite* (conduct, behavior, way of behaving). *Conduite* often refers to habitual, patterned ways of behaving—a style of being in the world. A subject's conduct might be characterized as aggressive, passive, seductive, compliant, etc.

The distinction helps clarify that what matters psychoanalytically is not just isolated actions but the *patterns* of action and conduct that reveal structural positions. A subject's conduct—their characteristic mode of relating, their habitual response patterns—often reveals their position in the fundamental fantasy more clearly than any single action does.

Behavior and Social Discourse

From a Lacanian perspective, behavior always occurs within and is shaped by social discourse. What appears as individual action is already structured by the symbolic order—by language, law, institutions, ideology. A subject's "choices" (where to live, whom to marry, what work to do, how to speak) are always constrained and enabled by the discursive fields in which they are embedded.

This does not mean the subject is simply determined by social structure; rather, the subject's agency always operates within symbolic constraints. Understanding action thus requires attention to the discursive context—the dominant discourses (master discourse, university discourse, capitalist discourse) within which action is intelligible.

Differentiation from Related Concepts

Action vs. The Act

| Aspect | Action (*agir*) | The Act (*acte*) | |--------|-----------------|------------------| | **Relation to Symbolic** | Within existing symbolic coordinates | Breaks with or restructures symbolic coordinates | | **Reversibility** | Reversible; can be undone or compensated | Irreversible; crosses a threshold | | **Subject's Position** | Remains unchanged | Subject is reconstituted; subjective destitution | | **Intentionality** | Conscious intention (even if determined by unconscious) | Exceeds intention; subject is exceeded by their own gesture | | **Guarantee** | Often backed by ego or social recognition | Without guarantee from the Other | | **Temporal Structure** | Occurs in linear time | Retroactively constituted; restructures past and future | | **Example** | Making love, quitting a job, marrying within conventional framework | Radically redefining one's position, breaking with fundamental fantasy |

Action vs. Symptom

| Aspect | Action | Symptom | |--------|--------|---------| | **Conscious intentionality** | Subject consciously intends the action | Subject may not recognize the symptom as their own doing | | **Meaning** | Action may express conscious desire | Symptom expresses repressed wish through compromise formation | | **Persistence** | Subject can choose to repeat or cease | Symptom compulsively repeats despite conscious wish to be rid of it | | **Integration** | Can be integrated into conscious narrative | Often remains alien to the subject's self-understanding |

Action vs. Acting-Out

Acting-out, as discussed in Outline II, is a specific form of action in which unconscious material is enacted within the transference. Not all action is acting-out; most everyday action is not. Acting-out is characterized by its staged, enigmatic quality and its address to the Other. Ordinary action may be conscious and purposeful.

Clinical and Technical Dimensions

Understanding the Analysand's Actions

In the analytic setting, the analyst must carefully listen to the analysand's account of their actions and decisions. The question is not "Are these good decisions?" or "Is the analysand behaving adaptively?" but rather "What do these actions reveal about the analysand's position in the fantasy, their relation to desire, their unconscious structure?"

An analysand might report that they have left a destructive relationship, secured a promotion, or traveled to a meaningful place. These are positive actions in a conventional sense. Yet the analyst is interested in:

What fantasy does this action express or conceal?
Has the analysand's fundamental desire-structure changed, or has the action merely displaced the neurotic pattern onto new objects?
Is the action a genuine assumption of desire, or is it still determined by ideals and demands of the Other?
Does the action represent movement toward subjective transformation, or is it symptomatic repetition in new form?

Actions at the Threshold of Acts

Some actions hover at the boundary between ordinary action and authentic act. A person might leave a marriage—ostensibly ordinary action within the realm of adult life-decisions. Yet if this departure represents a fundamental break with a fantasy-structure that has organized their life, if it involves subjective destitution and re-assumption of position, it might qualify as an act. The observable behavior—leaving a marriage—is the same in both cases; what differs is the subjective position before and after.

The analyst's work involves helping the analysand distinguish between:

**Reactive change**: Acting because external pressures or neurotic impulses force the action (leaving a job because of anxiety, entering a new relationship to escape loneliness).

**Adaptive action**: Making practical decisions within the existing structure of one's life and desires (negotiating better work conditions, developing new skills).

**Transformative act**: Assuming a new position vis-à-vis desire, involving traversal of fantasy and subjective reconstitution.

Socially Sanctioned vs. Authentic Action

Society and institutions offer many frameworks for action—marriage, career advancement, parenthood, spiritual practice, etc. These are socially sanctioned ways of organizing one's life. An analysand might undertake such actions (marriage, career change, having children) because they are socially expected or because the analysand has internalized ideals that demand them.

The question for the analyst is: does this action express the analysand's authentic desire, or is it a capitulation to the demands of the Other (parents, society, ideology)? Paradoxically, an action that appears to be a refusal of social sanction—dropping out, refusing career advancement, rejecting conventional family structures—might also be determined by reactive opposition to parental or social demands, and thus equally unfree.

The authentic act, in contrast, emerges when the analysand has traversed the fantasy and can act not out of compulsion (neurotic or social) but from assumption of their own desire, whatever form that takes.

Articulation with Core Lacanian Categories

Desire and Action

From a Lacanian perspective, ordinary action is often a displacement of desire. Desire, as Lacan theorizes it, is fundamentally metonymic—it slides from one object to another, never finding definitive satisfaction. Ordinary action might represent an attempt to satisfy or foreclose desire through concrete accomplishment: "If I achieve this goal, I will be satisfied; if I obtain this object, I will be complete."

Yet satisfaction through action remains illusory. Achievement and acquisition do not close the gap of desire; they merely redirect it. The subject who gains the promotion still lacks; the subject who marries still confronts the gap of desire in the intimate relationship. Understanding this helps explain why analysands often report that achieving their goals leaves them hollow or empty—because the real satisfaction sought was not the goal itself but the fantasy-structure organized around pursuing the goal.

The Act, by contrast, involves a reorganization of the subject's relation to desire. Rather than seeking satisfaction through action, the subject assumes the desire itself, accepts its fundamental impossibility and lack-structure, and acts from that position.

Action and the Real

Ordinary action occurs largely within the Symbolic and Imaginary registers. The Real, in Lacan's sense, is that which resists symbolization—the impossible, the traumatic, that which cannot be integrated into meaning. Ordinary action navigates within the realm of meaning and symbolic possibility.

Yet the Real insists. It appears in the gaps in action, in the failures of planned action, in the encounter with impossibility. The Act, as discussed in Outline I, involves touching the Real—encountering the point where symbolic mediation fails and the subject must act without guarantee.

Action and the Other

Ordinary action always relates to the Other—either seeking the Other's recognition, fleeing the Other's judgment, or conforming to the Other's demands. The analysand's actions are often ways of trying to satisfy, control, or negotiate with the big Other (society, institutions, internalized figures of authority).

The Act, by contrast, involves a moment where the subject suspends dependence on the Other's guarantee. The subject acts without knowing if the Other will approve, understand, or validate. In this sense, the Act is characterized by a radical assumption of responsibility and freedom that does not rely on the Other's mediation.

Examples and Illustrations

Ordinary Actions

**Career advancement**: An analysand secures a promotion through hard work and skill. This is action within the symbolic order; it follows established pathways and does not necessarily transform the subject.

**Romantic attachment**: An analysand enters into a new romantic relationship. The observable action—dating, commitment—is conventional. Yet the analysand might remain structured by the same fantasy of the perfect partner who will complete them.

**Travel**: An analysand takes a trip to a meaningful location. This is action; it may be enriching and pleasurable, but it does not necessarily constitute an act in the Lacanian sense if the analysand's fundamental position remains unchanged.

**Parenting**: An analysand becomes a parent. Parenting involves action—care, decision-making, guidance. Yet the analysand's relation to the parental role might reproduce parental patterns from their own childhood, suggesting symptomatic determination rather than authentic assumption.

Actions at the Threshold

**Leaving a destructive relationship**: An analysand leaves a long-term relationship marked by abuse or fundamental incompatibility. This action might represent either: (a) practical adaptation within the existing neurotic structure (finding a "better" partner who still fulfills the same fantasy), or (b) a transformative act involving traversal of the fantasy and reassumption of position. The distinction depends on the subjective work done in relation to the action.

**Coming out**: An analysand publicly assumes an identity (sexual orientation, gender identity, political commitment) that has been concealed or implicit. This action might represent either reactive rebellion against family/society or authentic assumption of desire. The subjective positioning before and after distinguishes the cases.

**Career change**: An analysand leaves a secure career to pursue something less conventional. This might represent either: (a) neurotic flight from a situation that triggered anxiety, or (b) an act in which the subject has traversed fantasy and assumed a new position toward work and desire.

Cultural Examples

**Marriage as social action**: In traditional narratives, marriage is often treated as the ultimate action—the decisive moment. Yet many marriages reproduce existing structures rather than transforming them. The wedding ceremony, while theatrical and ceremonial, does not necessarily constitute an act in the Lacanian sense.

**Coming of age rituals**: Cultures often mark transitions (adolescence to adulthood, initiation) through prescribed actions. Yet these ritualized actions, while important, do not necessarily transform the subject in the deeper sense of the Lacanian act.

**Revolutionary action**: Political uprisings and revolutions involve collective action. Yet not all revolutionary action constitutes authentic acts; many revolutions reproduce the power structures they overthrow. Distinguishing revolutionary acts from mere reactive change requires attention to subjective transformation and restructuring of symbolic coordinates.

Post-Lacanian and Contemporary Perspectives

Action and Discourse

Later Lacanian theorists, particularly those concerned with discourse theory, have developed understandings of how action is shaped by and embedded in different social discourses. From this perspective, what appears as individual choice is always already structured by discourse—the master discourse, the university discourse, the capitalist discourse, etc. Understanding action thus requires analyzing the discursive field in which it occurs.

Action and Ideology

Contemporary Lacanian-influenced theorists (following Žižek) have explored how ordinary action is often ideological—that is, how subjects act in ways that reproduce the very structures that dominate them, often without conscious awareness. The subject's "free choices" turn out to be constrained by ideology. Recognizing this ideological determination of action is part of the analyst's work.

Action and Late Capitalism

Some contemporary theorists argue that late capitalism has transformed the relationship between action and desire. Consumer action, while appearing to satisfy desire ("choose your identity," "express yourself through consumption"), actually intensifies the production of desire and prevents authentic assumption of desire. In this context, ordinary action becomes increasingly symptomatic.

Reception and Debates

Therapeutic Goals and Action

A recurrent debate in psychoanalysis concerns whether the goal of treatment is to change behavior or to change subjective position. Traditional therapeutic approaches (behavioral therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy) emphasize behavior change. Psychoanalysis, particularly Lacanian psychoanalysis, emphasizes subjective transformation, which may or may not result in observable behavior change.

Some argue that behavior change is a valid and important outcome of analysis. Others insist that subjective transformation is what matters analytically, and that behavior change is merely a secondary effect. Lacan's position—emphasizing the distinction between ordinary action and the authentic act—tends toward the latter view: the analyst is concerned with the subject's relation to desire and assumption of position, not with whether the subject's outward behavior conforms to social expectations.

Ethics of Action

An important ethical question: if the analyst is not primarily concerned with guiding the analysand toward socially adaptive action, what is the analyst's ethical responsibility? Some worry that over-emphasizing subjective transformation at the expense of practical outcomes might lead to clinical irresponsibility. Others argue that genuine ethical responsibility to the analysand requires respecting the analysand's desire and autonomy, which may not align with conventional notions of healthy or adaptive action.

Key Texts and Primary Sources

**Lacan, Jacques**. "The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of Its Power" (1958). In *Écrits*. Éditions du Seuil, 1966.
**Lacan, Jacques**. *Le Séminaire, Livre VII: L'Éthique de la psychanalyse* (1959-60). Éditions du Seuil, 1986.
**Freud, Sigmund**. *The Psychopathology of Everyday Life* (1901).

Secondary Literature

**Evans, Dylan**. *An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis*. Routledge, 1996.
**Fink, Bruce**. *A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique*. Harvard University Press, 1997.
**Nobus, Dany**. *Jacques Lacan and the Freudian Practice of Psychoanalysis*. Routledge, 2000.

References

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1. **OUTLINE IV: PASSAGE TO THE ACT (French: *passage à l'acte*)**

- Unheaded Opening/Lead**

In Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, *passage à l'acte* (passage to the act, literally "the passage to it") designates a sudden, impulsive break from a situation experienced as unbearable, characterized by the subject's abrupt exit from the symbolic scene and fall into the Real. Unlike the Act proper (*l'acte*), which transforms the symbolic order while remaining inscribed in it, passage to the act represents a collapse of symbolic mediation—the subject ceases momentarily to function as a speaking being and becomes, in an instant, a pure body or object. The term originates in French psychiatric and clinical vocabulary, where it referred to impulsive, often violent acts marking the onset of psychotic episodes or acute crises. Lacan theorizes passage to the act primarily in Seminar X: *Anxiety* (1962-63) and Seminar XI: *The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis* (1964), where he establishes it as a distinct clinical and structural phenomenon. Passage to the act is often associated with psychotic structures, particularly those involving foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father, though it is not limited to psychosis; it can occur in neurotic or perverse structures under extreme stress. The phenomenon raises profound clinical and ethical questions: How does the analyst recognize and respond to the imminence of passage to the act? What is the distinction between passage to the act and authentic act, and between passage to the act and acting-out? Contemporary theorist Jean Allouch has refined Lacanian understandings through the concept of "enlightened passage to the act" and through analysis of notorious criminal cases. Understanding passage to the act is clinically essential for analysts working with at-risk populations, and theoretically important for grasping the limits of symbolic mediation and the subject's encounter with the Real.

Historical Development

Psychiatric Origins

The term *passage à l'acte* originates in French clinical psychiatry as a descriptor for impulsive, violent, or self-destructive acts that emerge suddenly, particularly in psychiatric emergency contexts. Early psychiatrists used the term to describe sudden outbreaks of aggression, suicidal attempts, or psychotic violence—acts that seemed to come from nowhere, poorly motivated by antecedent psychological events, and involving a break from the subject's usual behavioral patterns.

The psychiatric literature emphasizes the sudden onset, the lack of clear conscious motivation, and the often tragic consequences (injury, death, legal consequences). The act is seen as an eruption of impulse or madness rather than as a meaningful communication or structured choice.

Freud and Impulsive Acts

While Freud does not use the term *passage à l'acte* extensively, his clinical writings contain descriptions of sudden impulsive acts, particularly in cases involving hysteria, psychosis, and trauma. Freud is interested in what precipitates such acts—what unconscious factors, what breaking-points in the psychic apparatus, might produce sudden violent or self-destructive behavior.

In the case of the young homosexual woman (presented in Freud's 1920 paper), the subject's suicidal leap following her father's glance and her lover's rejection exemplifies what Lacan will call passage to the act. The subject does not communicate her distress; rather, she exits the scene entirely through the attempt on her life.

Lacan's Systematization

Lacan's major contribution is to theorize passage to the act as a distinct structural phenomenon with specific characteristics, to relate it systematically to other clinical phenomena (acting-out, the authentic act, symptom), and to connect it to his theory of the subject, the Real, and psychotic structures.

In Seminar X, Lacan explicitly distinguishes three phenomena often confused in clinical and psychiatric literature:

1. **Symptom**: A compromise formation that expresses repressed content in disguised form; the subject often suffers from it; it persists. 2. **Acting-out** (*mise en acte*): An enigmatic action staged for the Other, remaining within the symbolic field; interpretable. 3. **Passage to the act**: An abrupt exit from the scene; collapse of symbolic mediation; the subject falls into the Real.

Theoretical Definition and Structure

The Act as Exit from the Scene

The defining characteristic of passage to the act is the subject's *exit from the scene*. This phrase is not merely metaphorical. Literally, the subject may flee, leap from a window, attempt suicide, or otherwise physically remove themselves from the situation. Psychologically and structurally, the subject ceases to maintain their position as a speaking subject within the symbolic order and instead becomes, momentarily, a pure body—object, mass, thing.

Lacan uses the phrase "falling off the stage" (*tomber de la scène*) to contrast passage to the act with acting-out. In acting-out, the subject remains on stage, performing an action for the Other's gaze. In passage to the act, the subject falls off the stage entirely; there is no longer an audience, no longer an Other to address, no longer a message to be communicated.

Collapse of Symbolic Mediation

Passage to the act is characterized by a temporary collapse of the symbolic order's hold on the subject. The subject, who normally navigates the world through language, meaning, and signification, suddenly ceases to do so. The subject becomes incapable of speech, of reflection, of integration into social exchange. They are, for the moment, outside language.

This distinguishes passage to the act from acting-out, which, however enigmatic or impulsive, remains a form of communication. The subject who acts out is still, in some sense, speaking (even if through action rather than words). The subject in passage to the act is, momentarily, not speaking—they have fallen outside the symbolic order into the Real.

The Real and Anxiety

Passage to the act is closely linked to anxiety in Lacanian theory. While anxiety is generally understood as a signal—a warning that something in the psychic structure is threatened—anxiety that reaches an unbearable intensity can precipitate passage to the act. The subject, overwhelmed by anxiety, seeks to escape the situation that produces it by exiting the scene entirely.

The Real, in Lacan's sense, is what remains when symbolization fails—the impossible, the traumatic, that which cannot be integrated into meaning. Passage to the act represents a direct encounter with the Real. The subject does not elaborate, interpret, or defend against the Real encounter; rather, they flee it through exit.

Distinction from Authentic Act

This is crucial and often misunderstood. Passage to the act is *not* an act in the Lacanian sense. The authentic act, as described in Outline I, involves assumption of position, subjective transformation, and sustained reorganization of the symbolic. Passage to the act, by contrast, is characterized by the subject's *abdication* of position. The subject does not assume responsibility; rather, they attempt to escape it.

In passage to the act, the subject does not say: "I have decided to break with this situation and assume the consequences." Rather, the subject is overwhelmed and flees. The action is not deliberate in the sense of the Act; it is impulsive, reactive, an attempt to escape rather than to transform.

This distinction is ethically and clinically significant. One might speak of a "glorious act" or an act that, while causing suffering, represents the subject's authentic assumption of position. Passage to the act, by contrast, is never glorious; it is always tragic, a moment of breakdown rather than breakthrough.

Articulation with Psychotic Structure

Foreclosure and the Symbolic Deficit

Passage to the act is often associated with psychotic structures, particularly those involving foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father. In Lacanian theory, the Name-of-the-Father functions as the primary signifier that anchors the symbolic order for the subject. It establishes the law, names desire, and provides a minimal structuring of the subject's relation to the Other and to jouissance.

When the Name-of-the-Father is foreclosed—that is, when it has never been symbolically inscribed—the subject lacks this anchoring point. The subject's relationship to the symbolic order is consequently precarious. Meanings can shift; signifiers can become detached from stable referents; the distinction between self and Other can become uncertain.

In such structures, passage to the act may occur when the subject is confronted with something that would normally be handled through symbolic resources but which the subject lacks. For example, encountering a demand from the Other, confronting a loss or disappointment, or facing humiliation—situations that a neurotic subject might process through symptom, fantasy, or interpretation—can overwhelm the psychotic subject and precipitate passage to the act.

Invasion of Jouissance

In psychotic structures, jouissance is often not properly regulated by the symbolic order. Jouissance (enjoyment in excess of pleasure, satisfaction linked to pain and the death drive) may invade the subject's experience without being mediated or contained. Passage to the act can represent an attempt to escape this invasive jouissance by exiting the situation that provokes it.

Psychotic Crisis and Passage to the Act

The onset of an acute psychotic episode is often marked by passage to the act. The subject, confronted with hallucinations, delusions, or a sudden break in the symbolic order's coherence, may act out violently or flee. The act is not a reasoned response but a desperate attempt to manage an impossible situation.

Clinical Manifestations and Markers

Observable Signs

How can the analyst or clinician recognize the imminence of passage to the act? Key markers include:

**Sudden intensification of anxiety**: The subject reports or displays mounting anxiety that reaches a seemingly unbearable level.
**Disorganization of speech**: The subject's ability to express themselves verbally deteriorates; they become incoherent or silent.
**Physical agitation or collapse**: The subject may display extreme restlessness, trembling, or conversely, a kind of motionless stupor.
**Sense of dissolution**: The subject reports a feeling that they are falling apart, losing coherence, that reality is becoming unbearable or unreal.
**Preoccupation with escape**: The subject repeatedly expresses the need to flee, to leave, to get away from the situation.
**Loss of object constancy**: The subject may lose sight of relationships, responsibilities, or meaning-structures that normally anchor them.

In Different Presentations

- In psychosis**: Passage to the act may follow a psychotic break or hallucination. The subject, hearing voices or experiencing paranoid delusions, may suddenly act violently or flee.

- In severe trauma or acute crisis**: Even a neurotic subject, faced with an extreme trauma or unbearable situation, may experience passage to the act. The normal symbolic resources break down under the force of the Real encounter.

- In adolescence**: Adolescents, especially those with unstable symbolic structures, may be prone to passage to the act. The normal crises of adolescence—loss of childhood identity, emergence of sexuality, confrontation with death, social humiliation—can precipitate sudden, impulsive acts.

1. Clinical Handling and Analyst's Response ==

Recognition and Assessment

The analyst must be alert to the possibility of passage to the act. This involves:

Listening for markers of escalating anxiety and disorganization.
Monitoring the analysand's capacity to maintain verbal communication and symbolic mediation.
Assessing the analysand's connection to anchor-points (relationships, meaning-structures, object constancy).
Understanding the analysand's diagnostic structure and particular vulnerabilities.

Prevention and Intervention

While passage to the act cannot always be prevented, the analyst can work to:

**Maintain symbolic anchors**: Help the analysand maintain connection to language, meaning, and relationships that structure their symbolic world.
**Modulate anxiety**: Through interpretation and presence, help the analysand contain anxiety before it reaches unbearable levels.
**Interpret approaching breakdown**: When possible, interpret the analysand's reports of disorganization and help them articulate what is overwhelming them.
**Set appropriate limits**: In some cases, the analyst may need to set limits on behavior that is dangerous or self-destructive, though this must be done carefully to avoid traumatizing the analysand further.
**Coordinate care**: In cases of severe risk, the analyst may need to coordinate with other professionals (psychiatrists, crisis services) or to recommend hospitalization.

Technical Caution

An important clinical note: the analyst must be cautious not to precipitate passage to the act through interpretation. An interpretation that touches a catastrophic point or threatens the analysand's fragile symbolic structure could tip the scales. This is one reason why analysts working with psychotic or severely traumatized analysands often proceed with great caution, emphasizing stabilization and relationship-building over aggressive interpretation.

Examples and Illustrations

Classical Cases

- Freud's Young Homosexual Woman**: The analysand, a young woman, after her father's angry glance and her lover's rejection following disclosure of the affair, throws herself over a railway embankment in what appears to be a suicidal attempt. Lacan reads this not as an ethical act but as a passage to the act—the subject, humiliated and rejected, exits the scene rather than assuming a position within it.

- The Papin Sisters**: In the 1933 case of two French maids who murdered their employer and employer's daughter in a sudden violent assault, Lacan and later theorists (especially Allouch) have analyzed the event as a passage to the act—a sudden eruption of violence marking a break in the symbolic order rather than a planned or even consciously motivated crime.

- Louis Althusser's Murder of Hélène Rytmann**: The French Marxist philosopher's sudden strangling of his wife in 1980 is analyzed by Allouch and others as potentially involving passage to the act—a sudden break triggered by overwhelming anxiety or psychotic experience rather than a deliberate act.

Contemporary Examples

- Suicidal Crises**: A subject who has been managing depression and suicidal ideation suddenly attempts suicide—not through a planned method but through an abrupt, impulsive act of jumping from a height or self-harm. This represents passage to the act in the clinical sense.

- Violent Outbursts**: A subject who has been maintaining a facade of control suddenly becomes explosively violent, seemingly without provocation (though subjectively, the provocation is overwhelming for them). This is distinct from premeditated violence; it is a sudden loss of symbolic control.

- Flight**: A subject in an unbearable situation—an impossible relationship, an intolerable work situation, overwhelming shame or humiliation—suddenly leaves, flees the country, or goes into hiding. This is not a reasoned decision; it is an impulsive escape from a situation experienced as unendurable.

Post-Lacanian Elaborations

Jean Allouch: "Enlightened Passage to the Act"

Jean Allouch's *New Remarks on the Passage to the Act* (first published in French as *Remarques nouvelles sur le passage à l'acte*) offers a significant reworking and refinement of Lacanian concepts. Allouch distinguishes between:

**Blind passage to the act**: The subject acts without conscious understanding, overwhelmed by forces they cannot articulate.
**Enlightened passage to the act**: Allouch suggests (somewhat provocatively) that psychoanalysis might work not to prevent passage to the act but to clarify its structure—to enable subjects to understand what they are doing without full consciousness, to achieve a kind of "clarified unconsciousness" rather than blind repetition.

This formulation is controversial. It suggests that some passages to the act might, under certain conditions, be analyzed or brought into a form of understanding. Allouch cautions that this does not mean endorsing or encouraging such acts; rather, it means working analytically with the reality that passage to the act occurs and may be analyzable even if not preventable.

Contemporary Discussions of Extreme Violence and Terrorism

In recent years, Lacanian concepts including passage to the act have been engaged in discussions of terrorism, mass violence, and spectacular acts of destruction. Some theorists ask whether certain violent political acts represent passage to the act (the actor overwhelmed by ideological forces, acting impulsively and destructively) or authentic acts (the actor consciously assuming a position and its consequences).

This remains deeply contested. Some argue that the distinction between passage to the act and act is essential for thinking about political violence ethically—that passage to the act represents tragic breakdown rather than heroic rupture. Others worry that Lacanian categories are being stretched inappropriately or that the framework is being used to pathologize political resistance.

Feminist and Social Critique

Feminist theorists have raised important questions about passage to the act, particularly in relation to gender and power. Who is labeled as having undergone passage to the act? Are there gendered patterns in how this diagnosis is applied? How does passage to the act relate to social oppression, racism, and structural violence?

Some theorists note that passage to the act is often diagnosed in marginalized or oppressed populations—the poor, people of color, those with severe mental illness—while similar behaviors in the privileged are more likely to be pathologized differently or not at all. This raises questions about whether passage to the act is a neutral clinical category or one inflected by power and ideology.

Reception and Debates

Frequency and Prevention

A persistent question: how common is passage to the act? Should it be expected and planned for in clinical work? Can it be reliably prevented? Views vary:

Some clinicians treat passage to the act as a rare emergency requiring hospitalization and crisis intervention.
Others suggest that minor forms of passage to the act—sudden departures, impulsive acts—are more common in clinical practice.
Still others question whether the category is as distinct from acting-out or symptom as Lacan suggests.

Status in Different Diagnostic Structures

There is debate about whether passage to the act is primarily or exclusively a psychotic phenomenon. Some argue that it can occur in neurotic or traumatized subjects under extreme stress. Others maintain that true passage to the act is specific to psychotic structures or to acute psychotic episodes.

Ethical and Political Status

Perhaps the most heated debates concern the ethical and political implications of the concept. If passage to the act is a breakdown of symbolic order, is it ever ethically justified? Can one speak of "right" or "appropriate" passages to the act? Or is the category necessarily associated with pathology and tragedy?

Some theorists have worried that Lacanian concepts, particularly as appropriated by Žižek, have been used to romanticize violence. Others defend Lacan by noting that he is descriptive and structural rather than normative—the concept maps how certain structural breakdowns occur without endorsing them morally.

Key Texts and Primary Sources

**Lacan, Jacques**. *Le Séminaire, Livre X: L'Angoisse* (1962-63). Unpublished; available in French transcripts and partial English translations.
**Lacan, Jacques**. *Le Séminaire, Livre XI: Les Quatre Concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse* (1964). Éditions du Seuil, 1973.
**Allouch, Jean**. *Remarques nouvelles sur le passage à l'acte* (2006). English translation: *New Remarks on the Passage to the Act*. Routledge, 2021.
**Freud, Sigmund**. "A Case of Homosexuality in a Woman" (1920). In *The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud*, vol. 18.

Secondary Literature

**Evans, Dylan**. *An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis*. Routledge, 1996. (Entries: "Passage à l'acte," "Acting Out," "Anxiety," "Real.")
**Fink, Bruce**. *Reading Seminar XI: Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis*. SUNY Press, 1995.
**Nobus, Dany**. *Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis*. Routledge, 1998.
**Rabate, Jean-Michel**, ed. *The Cambridge Companion to Lacan*. Cambridge University Press, 2003.

References

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Notes

This outline is designed for expansion into a full encyclopedia article of 2,500-3,500 words, with detailed case examples, clinical illustrations, and extensive engagement with contemporary debates about violence, terrorism, and the ethical status of passage to the act.

Historical Development and Genealogy

Freudian Antecedents and "Agieren"

Freud's Technical Handling and the Problem of the Transference

Lacan's Reworking: Seminar X and XI

Theoretical Definition and Structure

Acting-Out as Address and Message

Acting-Out and Repetition

Acting-Out and the Transference

Distinguished from Passage to the Act

Acting-Out and Symptom

Clinical and Technical Dimensions

Recognition of Acting-Out

Technical Handling

In Different Diagnostic Structures

Countertransference and the Analyst's Position

Examples and Illustrations

Classical Freudian Cases

Clinical Vignettes

Post-Lacanian Elaborations

Lacanian Clinic and Acting-Out

Contemporary Variations

Reception and Debates

Frequency and Inevitability

Distinction from Passage to the Act

Ethical Implications

Key Texts and Primary Sources

Secondary Literature

See Also

References

Notes

Further Reading

Historical Development

Freud and Behavioral Action

Lacan's Critique of Behavioral and Ego-Psychological Approaches

Lacan and the Symbolic Order

Theoretical Definition and Structure

Ordinary Action as Regulated by the Symbolic

Symptomatic Action

Action vs. Conduct (*conduite*)

Behavior and Social Discourse

Differentiation from Related Concepts

Action vs. The Act

Action vs. Symptom

Action vs. Acting-Out

Clinical and Technical Dimensions

Understanding the Analysand's Actions

Actions at the Threshold of Acts

Socially Sanctioned vs. Authentic Action

Articulation with Core Lacanian Categories

Desire and Action

Action and the Real

Action and the Other

Examples and Illustrations

Ordinary Actions

Actions at the Threshold

Cultural Examples

Post-Lacanian and Contemporary Perspectives

Action and Discourse

Action and Ideology

Action and Late Capitalism

Reception and Debates

Therapeutic Goals and Action

Ethics of Action

Key Texts and Primary Sources

Secondary Literature

See Also

References

Historical Development

Psychiatric Origins

Freud and Impulsive Acts

Lacan's Systematization

Theoretical Definition and Structure

The Act as Exit from the Scene

Collapse of Symbolic Mediation

The Real and Anxiety

Distinction from Authentic Act

Articulation with Psychotic Structure

Foreclosure and the Symbolic Deficit

Invasion of Jouissance

Psychotic Crisis and Passage to the Act

Action vs. Conduct (conduite)