Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007

Thirty years ago there was a (rather contrived, I thought)
classification for delinquent yoofs. It was called "I-level", the Eye
denoting Inter-personal Maturity. Five overlapping categories, from
infantile through self-realizers, each with sub-categories.
Ordinarily, as in ninety-something percent of the populace, a child
would progress through each stage at a predicable rate. When a
person's years outstripped his/her inter-personal maturity, the
mismatch resulted in aberrant behavior: many incarcerated adults are
"stuck at I-3", or otherwise identified as late- or never-maturers.

Delinquent children most likely to come the the attention of
correctional or custodial authorities were I-level Four, generally
mature enough to realize what they were doing was "wrong", but not
motivated or insightful enough to do otherwise.

Principal categories of I-4 were NA and NX: Neurotic Acting-out, and
Neurotic Anxious. People so described were very consistent in their
behaviors, for the most part.

The Actors-out consistently flailed about in their personal lives,
breaking laws and noses at their (frequent) whim.

Neurotic Anxious were too busy inspecting their own mental effluent
and unhappinesses, and sharing every sad little inner experience, to
bother with physical confrontations.

One of the most fascinating individuals I ever dealt with was an I-4
16-year-old with a dash of psychosis. He could switch from Acting-out
to Anxious Neurotic and back in two blinks of an eye (mine; he never
batted one).

Any road, "Acting-out" is reducing inner tension by expressing it in
tangible ways.