On criminal act and its relation to the psychoanalytic clinic: passage to the act and acting out

Abstract

This paper, from a theoretical review, aims at understanding the criminal act as a symbolic fact by taking as a reference Jacques Lacan’s theory between 1954 and 1967, which considers the subject of the unconscious as part of a language structure. It also elaborates on the notions of language and speech as fundamental basis of the symbolic register. Hence, a clear status is given to the act from the point of view of the logic of signifier which, through speech, makes it possible to consider human actions as acts having significations that involve, in turn, desire and jouissance; these are notions from the Lacanian psychoanalysis and the main elements that constitute the subject’s structure. Finally, it refers to the psychoanalytic clinical categories of passage to the act and acting out, thus allowing a possible comprehension and explanation of the phenomenon of crime by taking into account these two categories of the act, and illustrating it with the case of Althusser in order to punctuate both the logic of the criminal act and the basis of the so-called subjective responsibility. In conclusion, the criminal act, from the categories described of the act, is in relation to the chain of signifiers that, through desire and jouissance, marks the subjective position of the one who commits crime in his/her history as a subject.