ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the differences on the way toward illustrating how an understanding about and the management of countertransference enactments differ as a function of varying psychoanalytic theories. One sure way to remain lost in the maze of an enactment is to see the situation from a one-person perspective that envisions one party as "the doer" and the other as "the one done to". All analysts seem to appreciate that enactments are co-constructed – that each party contributes his or her fair share by reacting in her own particular way to what has been elicited in them by the other. When the analyst successfully extricates herself from an enactment and comes to realize something about herself and the patient that she wishes to convey, she may feel inclined to fashion this understanding into an interpretation. Taking issue with the analysand's characterization of her as desperate falls into the category of the analyst "failing to wear the attribution."
