acting out

1. n. In psychoanalysis acting on an impulse instead of reporting it during the course of treatment.
2. v. A defense mechanism in which unconscious impulses are expressed through actions which are often inappropriate and uncharacteristic as a way of expressing the energy of an impulse while keeping the impulse itself unconscious.
3. v. In common usage it has come to denote any negatively valued or socially inappropriate enactment of inferred unconscious impulses and especially those considered immature by the observer.