A Conversation With the Boston Change Group on Enactments

Abstract

Psychoanalysts are increasingly preoccupied by enactments, a phenomenon as difficult to capture in the moment as it is to define theoretically. Analytic authors, particularly from the relational school, see enactments as arising out of dissociation (Stern, 2004). The Boston Change Process Study Group (2013) believes that enactments happen entirely between the two participants in the here-and-now. Incremental shifts in how therapist and patient interact pass a threshold that brings the two seemingly of a sudden to a different level of relational organization. I propose that these two views derive from different angles and distances in relation to their subject. The dissociation model provides a view from within a historically situated, holistic individual. The systems model provides a view from above of interacting system influences.

Keywords:

• diegesis versus mimesis praxis
• dissociation
• enactment
• narrative

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel Goldin

Daniel Goldin, MFT, PsyD., is a member of the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. He serves as Associate Editor of Psychoanalytic Inquiry and as Associate Book Editor for Psychoanalysis: Self and Context. Daniel Goldin also maintains a private practice in South Pasadena, California.