Analysis and Acting Out: Armstrong and Freud

Abstract This essay traces Isobel Armstrong's use, in The Radical Aesthetic (2000), of Freud's distinction between analysis and acting out. It defines the difference between these activities in criticism in order to describe the difference between criticism that takes aesthetic questions radically and seriously and the kinds of criticism that do not. There is reference to trends in criticism in the first quarter of this century. The essay concludes by considering specific examples of Armstrong's more radical, analytic mode from across her career.