ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the issue of action in analysis and the value of creating an analytic space that houses not only the words our (adult) patients use to express their innermost worlds, but also the actions. It illustrates this idea by presenting detailed clinical material from the treatment of a woman who tape-recorded, for two and a half years, each and every analytic session she had with author. This was accepted in the analysis as something patient felt she needed to do, even as she talked about it. Historically, psychoanalysts have claimed that they could best treat patients who communicate by saying whatever comes to mind—the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis. The patient who insisted on action in an analytic treatment was seen as not quite suitable for such treatment and given a poor prognosis. Psychoanalytic literature is replete with papers on the concepts of action, acting out, and enactments.
