Excerpt from Acting Out, The Neurosis of Our Time, Milman and Goldman…
Freud originally defined acting out as the compelling urge to repeat the forgotten past. This definition raises a number of important questions. First of all, what aspect of the past is being repeated in acting out. Is it an actual event, or is it a fantasy which persists from childhood? On this point Freud is silent. At other stages in his work, Freud repeatedly was faced with the question about whether the individual or the group was reacting to a memory or a fantasy. It will be recalled that the major thrust of his work from the early days was to recall actual memories, but it became more and more impossible to recall these memories, then replaced that demand by the need to reconstruct the event in the known material. In the paper cited, on "Remembering, Healing and Working Through," for the first time he saw the working through of resistances as the hallmark of analysis…
Thus it is really not the memory that becomes important but ego's capacity to tolerate a memory. Sullivan once said that, “ it is not the trauma, but the scar”. Memory arouses such a strong emotional reaction in the patient that he cannot sit back quietly and tolerate it; accordingly he tries to resort to some action which will obliterate this memory from consciousness. This is why acting-out patients produce so few memories, and the memories they do produce are particularly significant. By contrast, in the inhibited patient, action is held back by a variety of fears; many times these patients are outright phobic.Sometimes these patients produce many memories, sometimes they do not. Here the passivity is just as serious a problem as activity in the acting-out patient. Thus again the differentiation does not lie in the action as such, but in the strength of the ego.
What this means is this, by the nature of our brains, memories are created, from our environment (conversations with friends), television radio or whatever we see and hear. When we consume foods that contain protein, it gets broken down into amino acids that get folded into various other more complex proteins such neurotransmitters that permit us to learn and recall information. Some proteins like leucine, a branched chain amino acid, produce chemicals like glutamate, and has a direct affect on the brain and long term potentiation. Methionine is another amino acid that gets folded into a configuration called acetylcholine. Acetylcholine when released into the synaptic gap, causes the brain to recall information we have collected via our eyes and ears.
If you elevate levels of glutamate, it could deplete levels of acetylcholine, causing an inability to recall information. Elevating levels of glutamate can cause neurotoxicity and damage to neurons. GABA is also a neurotransmitter formed from glutamate and glutamine. It is a neuroinhibitory transmitter and helps regulate the firing of neurons by glutamate.
Sometimes when our brains are activated by these transmitters, some people will act out something stored in their memory which they have forgotten and because it has been acted out, they can no longer recall it. But if one recalls what they acted out, then the memory will be retained but in some altered form. Fantasies are formed in a different way, by one’s will to create the fantasy driven by some desire such as jealousy, envy, love or hate. Sometimes people act out their fantasies or sometimes cause others to act out their fantasies.
If we have seen something on the television that is particularly frightening or even novel, we may become traumatized or thrilled, which triggers the brain to release various chemicals in the synaptic gap which then sends a signal to other parts of the body, speeding up our heart rate and releasing stress hormones like cortisol, ( Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, A Clinical Review), that causes us to pay particular attention to the action going on. This in turn causes us to develop a stronger memory of that incident or behavior that we may act out later. Other memories can be created by passive attention to what is going on, all is being taken in by the brain and thus can be recalled or acted out. This is why I threw the plant off my deck, as it might have been part of the content of the mind of someone else.
Having taken excessive amounts of leucine is why I requested the Klonopin as the high levels of glutamate prevented me from sleeping. And it is my contention that the benzodiazepines are better at blocking the long term potentiation, especially for those who do view television. Merely instructing someone to forget something does not automatically release GABA into the synapse thus promoting inhibition of the memory. Not only had I taken the leucine but I also had taken 1000 mgs of choline daily for over a month but for other purposes than to increase recall.
Habituation can occur if the same neurons are fired repeatedly causing the neurons to remain wired together, another reason I felt some benzodiazepine would be more affective which I proved by taking GABA, glycine and taurine, internally but their effects are not long lasting and GABA gets converted back into glutamate which then creates more neuronal excitability and the other amino acids in elevated levels can cause other problems.
I am also of the opinion that this kind of acting out has been construed with emotional acting out in which one will act up when one is emotionally distressed rather than talking about one’s feelings. In my writings I am referring to the above described not emotional acting out. In my Commentary on the film, Death In Love, I do mention this kind of acting out.
Update 3: I.D. Magazine has an interesting article on Buyology, a New Menace Invading Your Brain, which promotes acting out. This can create conflict in the human brain and mind possibly exhibiting itself as an inability to make decisions or take actions that would be in one’s own best interest.
This is what I have been teaching myself along with other things over the past 10 years.
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