ABSTRACT
The term enactment, first used by American analysts, was accepted by a number of analyst groups. Chronic enactment is expressed through behaviour that involves both members of a dyad, whereby an obstructive collusion is formed with neither patient nor analyst being aware of what is happening. One proposal of a definition leads psychoanalysts to see chronic enactments as intersubjective phenomena where, on the basis of mutual emotional induction, the analytic field is taken up by conduct and behaviour that involves both members of the analytic dyad. Such conduct and behaviour refer back to situations where verbal symbolisation was weakened. Dreams, as compromise formations, both reveal and conceal aspects of the patient's inner world and psychic functioning. D. Meltzer stresses that the dream dreamed by the analyst, even if it is an attempt to dream that of the patient, is a dream of the analyst.
