ABSTRACT

The term enactment refers to an acting-out (or acting-in) by both the therapist and the patient and is often referred to as a moment at which the therapist departs from his usual neutrality and his interpretative stance and resorts to some sort of action (verbal or otherwise) It often refers to some dramatic moment in the session when the analytic container bursts and the uncontained emotions are played out as if some kind of drama were taking place. Cassorla refers to this dramatic moment as `acute enactment', in this way distinguishing it from `chronic enactment' (Cassorla, 2001, 2005). Chronic enactments seem to be very common and go often unnoticed but they can be the main reason for a kind of stalemate in analysis.