Discussion of Daniel Goldin’s Paper on Enactments

Abstract

A comparison of the Boston Study Group and the Relationalist’s theories of enactments in which I maintain that enactments can be viewed either as an unknowable past expressing itself in present action, or as a process shift coming out of incremental shifts in the fit in here and now interaction. Often, it is difficult to distinguish enactments from any ongoing analytic experience oscillating between defense and revelation on the part of the analyst, analysand, or both. Yet, I agree with Goldin that change is not simply moving along, fitting together better, and reaching a higher level of organization as in infancy. An analytic interchange cannot be understood “separately from the project of grasping experience into words.”

Keywords:

• agency
• disavowal
• enactment
• narrative
• relational fit

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joseph Lichtenberg

Joseph Lichtenberg is the Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytic Inquiry and the Psychoanalytic Book Series.