The Concept of Enactment and Theoretical Convergence

Abstract

Classical analysts have recently become interested in the constructive use of countertransference. Some have extended the traditional conception of transference enactment to include the analyst's countertransference enactments. That is, the analyst may unwittingly actualize the patient's transference and, together with the patient, live out intrapsychic configurations. Awareness and interpretation are likely to occur only after there has been a transference-countertransference enactment. Some classical analytic writers have concluded that such experience may be both inevitable and a productive means of achieving analytic goals. This point of view corresponds closely to positions long expressed by interpersonal psychoanalytic contributors, thus signaling a trend toward a partial convergence of these two historically divergent theories of therapeutic action.