to restrict their sphere of application and to invest them once more
with precision and significance. This is what happened, for
example, to the concepts of 'Transference' and of 'Trauma'.

The concept and term 'transference' was designed originally to
establish the fact that the realistic relationship between analyst
and patient is invariably distorted by phantasies and object-
relations which stem from the patient's past and that these very
distortions can be turned into a technical tool to reveal the patient's
past pathogenic history. In present days, the meaning of the term
has been widened to the extent that it comprises whatever happens
between analyst and patient regardless of its derivation and of the
reasons for its happening.

A 'trauma' or 'traumatic happening' meant originally an
(external or internal) event of a magnitude with which the indivi-
dual's ego is unable to deal, i.e. a sudden influx of excitation,
massive enough to break through the ego's normal stimulus
barrier. To this purely quantitative meaning of the term were
added in time all sorts of qualifications (such as cumulative,
retrospective, silent, beneficial), until the concept ended up as more
or less synonymous with the notion of a pathogenic event in
general.

Psychoanalytic concepts may be overtaken also by a further
fate, which is perhaps of even greater significance. Most of them
owe their origin to a particular era of psychoanalytic theory, or to
a particular field of clinical application, or to a particular mode of
technique. Since any of the backgrounds in which they are rooted,
are open to change, this should lead either to a corresponding
change in the concepts or to their abandonment. But, most fre-
quently, this has failed to happen. Many concepts are carried
forward through the changing scene of psychoanalytic theory and
practice without sufficient thought being given to their necessary
alteration or re-definition.

A case in kind is the concept of 'acting out'. It was created at the
very outset of technical thinking and teaching, tied to the treatment
of neurotic patients, and it characterized originally a specific
reaction of these patients to the psychoanalytic technique, namely
that certain items of their past, when retrieved from the un-
conscious, did not return to conscious memory but revealed
themselves instead in behaviour, were 'acted on', or 'acted out'
instead of being remembered. By now, this clear distinction

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