ABSTRACT
While psychoanalysis, by tradition, has emphasised the medium of thought and fantasy, the call to action likewise takes place continuously in psychoanalytic treatment (Loewald, 1975), sometimes in subtle tones and nuanced body movements or startling unexpected interactions. Over the past twenty years, the term enactment has been developing as a way to identify a stream of activity and to acknowledge the richness of communication contained in the action process. These evocative action sequences involve analysand and analyst, and are frequently motivated by the analysand’s traumatic history, bypassing the symbolic verbal narrative, and making its way into the nonverbal transference/countertransference arena. Within the analytic dyad, the analysis of enactment leads to the symbolisation of trauma and the multiple meanings it has in psychic life.
