ABSTRACT
An enactment arises from the co-created relational unconscious between the therapist and the client and is manifested in some form of response that alerts the therapist that there may be a therapeutic impasse or a stalemate in the work. Either the therapist or the client may unconsciously initiate an action in such a way as to evoke a familiar or desired response from the other. `Enactments occur when an attempt to actualize a transference fantasy elicits a countertransference reaction' (Chused, 1991: 629), or vice versa when the therapist initiates the enactment. Because the initiator can be either therapist or client, it is vital to re¯ect on this process in supervision to gain an understanding of what is being enacted between you and the client. Essentially, however, we need to acknowledge that enactments are co-created and signal that there are certain critical issues which are being avoided, ignored or at best missed in the therapeutic encounter. The term enactment can refer to behaviours, thoughts, fantasies, gestures, even silences, or any process of which you may at the time be totally unaware of playing a part in as a therapist. Jacobs elaborates on these: `Among these are recurrent thoughts about the patient, often accompanied by feelings of depression or other mood changes, a repetitive need to talk about the sessions and the appearance of the patient in the manifest content of the analyst's dreams' (Jacobs, 1984: 291). What emerges in enactments, often through fantasies, dreams and non-verbal channels of communication, does not necessarily mean that this material is from a non-verbal period of development, but rather that it re¯ects the many ways, often implicit and non-verbal, in which we regulate affect and convey our con¯icts or unsymbolized or repressed material in a particular area to the other. The relational psychoanalytic writers prefer the term enactment to `acting out' or `repetition' since these terms tend to place the sole emphasis on the client's
to the analytic (1991: 627).
