ABSTRACT
Enactments are often experienced as a crisis in the therapeutic relationship. I use the word `theatre' in my subtitle to place emphasis on how both the client and the therapist may participate as characters in scenes authored by the other and themselves, in effect become characters from the split-off aspects of the self. I will describe how enactments are particularly likely if the patient presents with a history of trauma. Enactments are most appropriately viewed as aspects of the erotic transference where the passions of the therapeutic relationship are in the full throes of love and hate.
