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/ˈæktɪŋ aʊt/ Listen

Acting out

noun

A (usually irritating) impulsive and uncontrollable outburst by a problem child or a neurotic adult.

(psychiatry) the display of previously inhibited emotions (often in actions rather than words); considered to be healthy and therapeutic.

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Etymology of 'Acting out'

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"Acting out" Quotes from Famous Books

... felt at the same time a mingling of sadness. She could not help recalling the day when Crampas had told her for the first time that her husband was acting out a play with the ghost and her fear. The great pedagogue! But was he not right? Was not the play in place? All kinds of contradicting thoughts, good and ...

— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... Beatrice. Yet, in everything else, I liked her conception of the part; and where she urges Benedict to fight with Claudio, and where she reads Benedict's sonnet, she was admirable. But I received no more pleasure from Miss K.'s acting out the part than I have done in reading it, and this disappointed me. Neither did I laugh, but thought all the while of Miss K.,—how very graceful she was, and whether this and that way of rendering the part was just. ...

— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

Words linked to "Acting out" : display, psychiatry, blowup, psychological medicine, gush, outburst, psychopathology, ebullition, effusion