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Abstract

The inevitability of analytic enactments, defined as symbolic interactions between patient and analyst, is discussed. Clinical material from the psychoanalysis of a latency-age child is presented to illustrate the role of enactments and to demonstrate their usefulness in furthering the analytic work.
THE EVOCATIVE POWER OF ENACTMENTS
by: Judith Fingert Chused, M.D.
1805 Randolph St., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20011
202-726-9273
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9$<8)
5=9 9
6
6 
5



5!
5
 0>

%
1 Enactments have been used in support of various clinical
theories. For example, Alexander (1950) presented a clinical
vignette containing an enactment to support the therapeutic value
of the "Corrective Emotional Experience." He described a patient
who unconsciously provoked his analyst into disliking him in
order to reinforce a defensively distorted memory of his
relationship with his father. In the discussion, Alexander
noted, "The analyst's reaction was not calculated to be different
from that of the patient's father. He simply lost, for a moment,
the type of control which we consider so important in
psychoanalytic therapy"
 
?

 

 
"
6 
9 9

644
6 
/ 
(p.491). In essence, Alexander unconsciously participated in an
enactment of a defensively distorted object relationship. He
makes clear that it was his subsequent awareness and articulation
of this which enabled the patient to gain from the experience.
Nonetheless, based on observation, Alexander made a
recommendation for a consciously manipulated experience for his
patients.

.
 0
 

 5=4$ 
)
= 
 6
7
.
=440
446
!=
"
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44900
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  /
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  
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  
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/ !
 5 
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50
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5/5
?!-
5
 
!!
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  
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
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5 
   4"5 
 #
 5 /0
   
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! 5
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9?9=?
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5  /5
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 9
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/
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G!
  #
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H 
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 7
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 #5 
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42
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43
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44
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45
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#
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47
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48
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49
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50
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!  A9
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... Patients draw therapists into roles that correspond to their relationship patterns, and therapists attempt to limit the degree to which they draw patients into their own private relationship patterns (Chused, 1991;Lothane, 2011). In order for patients' dramas to unfold, therapists need to be free enough to respond to the patients' invitations by letting themselves be drawn into these dramas to a degree that enables them to experience and understand these patterns. ...
... In 2019 Habermas jointly cited Chused (1991) and Lothane (2011) as dealing with enactments, but dramatology is a comprehensive approach to dramatization as action, whereas enactment is a specific instance of dramatization. Thus, (1) the basic meaning of enact is to act, play a role; (2) the psychoanalytic meaning of enactment as a synonym for acting out was proposed by Theodore Jacobs in 1986 (Jacobs, 1986). ...
... In 1986 I published a chapter on confrontation (Lothane, 1986). In 2009 I had cited Chused's (1991) description of her patient: "how she slipped into her 'actress role,' overdramatizing scenes and events" (p. 630). ...
... Creo que aquí revelan una mala interpretación de las tradiciones relacional e interpersonal. Lo que parece están criticando es una perspectiva clásica tardía (por ejemplo, Chused, 1991Chused, , 2003, donde se mantenía que todo el valor potencial de trabajar a través de los enactments era llevado a cabo por la interpretación después de que las partes hubieran trabajado su camino hacia cómo salir del enactment. Sin embargo, haciéndose eco de muchas voces, incluida la de Chused, Aron (1992) dice, "Incluso en una interpretación "precisa" de un enactment de transferencia-contratransferencia, no obstante, y como consecuencia de trabajar el camino propio para salir de una interacción, el analista puede estar participando o actuando otra interacción" (p. ...
... Vicarious gratification (Johnson & Szurek, 1952;Wangh, 1962) can be a manifestation of collusion if the protagonists share the same unresolved issue, which is not always the case. The same holds true for enactment (Chused, 1991), which can be collusive (Devereux, 2006) but can also be solely related to the patient's projective identification (Grinberg, 1979). (Grinberg, 1979). ...
Article
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At the core of collusions are unconscious unresolved issues shared by two or more participants, interlocked in a defensive maneuver. The issue at stake is avoided at an intrapsychic level and externalized in the interpersonal space. Unresolved issues may pertain to control, intimacy, loss, dependency, domination, boundaries and so on. This critical narrative review is based on a comprehensive consultation of the psychoanalytic, general system theory, family therapy and social psychology literature and is informed by our experience as psychotherapists, supervisors, and researchers. When working with the concept of collusion, be it as a clinician, supervisor or researcher, collusions must be delineated from other group dynamics. This might not always be easy. Moreover, reports on polyadic collusions and their contextual determinants are scattered in the literature of different psychotherapeutic approaches and lack precision at times. We therefore engage in a critical dialog with the literature and define different types of polyadic collusions, helping the reader gain a quick overview of this somehow neglected concept. Collusions occur in the psychiatric, psychotherapeutic, and medical setting, but especially in settings which ignore the unconscious and the impact of the wider social determinants on collusions. Collusion is a very useful concept since it brings together different therapeutic orientations but also patients and clinicians, the personal and professional of the caregiver, as well as psychotherapy, psychiatry, medicine, and the social sciences.
... (p. 661) Modern American ego psychologists viewed enactment as both universal and inevitable (Jacobs 1986(Jacobs , 2001McLaughlin, 1991;McLaughlin and Johan, 1992;Chused 1991Chused , 2003. Cassorla (2012), a Bionian analyst, also offered related thinking about enactment, insofar as he emphasized its inherent mutuality. ...
Thesis
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The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of psychodynamically and psychoanalytically oriented clinicians regarding enactment. Although enactment constitutes one of the most important emotional events in treatment, how clinicians experience, understand, manage, and use enactments clinically is not well understood. In order to study this topic, the author first conducted a thorough review of the literature regarding conceptions of transference and countertransference, action in psychoanalysis, and enactment. She then conducted semi-structured interviews with 14 clinicians who had experienced enactment, transcribed the video recordings of the interviews, and identified common themes using an interpretative phenomenological analysis. Three domains emerged in participants’ recollections of instances of enactment: the clinicians’ experience of enactment, the process of enactment, and the integration of enactment. This study confirms the importance of exploring the conception of enactment given its emotional intensity for practitioners, its clinical effects, and its potential for therapeutic growth.
... We had Grunes's (1984) article, "The therapeutic object relationship" and then Ted Jacobs's important 1986 article, "On countertransference enactments," followed by his (1991) book, The Use of the Self. In 1991, Judith Chused wrote, "The evocative power of enactments" (Chused, 1991). All of these articles ushered in the understanding of the importance of the role of the analyst in the process of working through unconscious fantasies that can't be worked through by interpretation alone and how important the analyst's role was in the process. ...
Article
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Psychoanalytic politics is explored starting with Freud’s death in 1939 and the politics of exclusion. The author looks at American psychoanalysis during the 70s and 80s to see what changes were taking place in technique and why the Freudians didn’t embrace Ferenczi’s work. When Ferenczi’s work did became available in the 80s, Relational and Interpersonal schools quickly took him as their forefather. The author tries to show why the psychology of small narcissistic differences, led Freudians to keep excluding him. Using Bach, Stone, Loewald and others as examples, she shows how hard it was to influence the established way of working with patients. Through a discussion of how Bach worked with her, the author finds a way to honor both Ferenczi and Bach and their loving care of patients.
Article
Content and Focus Person-centred therapy (PCT) and psychodynamic therapy frequently comprise two of the modalities that counselling psychologists are exposed to during their training, while the key concepts drawn from these domains continue to inform the practice of chartered counselling psychologists. Rogers’ ideas came at a time when psychodynamic thinking had established a firm grip over therapeutic orthodoxy and challenged the practice of psychoanalysis, even as they circumvented its theoretical underpinnings. This paper explores the extent to which the six necessary and sufficient, or core, conditions of therapeutic change can manifest in a psychodynamic therapy encounter. The author reviews relevant literature that juxtaposes PCT and psychodynamic understandings of therapeutic theory and practice whilst examining each of the conditions sequentially in the light of some key psychodynamic concepts. Conclusions The question posed by this paper requires an idiosyncratic answer that can be neither authoritatively nor objectively obtained. It is argued that our discipline’s epistemological position might facilitate a diffusion of the core conditions into the implicit theoretical apparatus that Sandler (1983) has identified as guiding the practice of psychoanalysts. I reflect on my personal journey of grappling with this issue before tentatively arriving at the conclusion that the conditions can indeed be present in psychodynamic practice, even if noticeably absent from psychodynamic theory.
Article
Enactment as a concept can serve analytic discourse through its established meaning of an act intended strongly to influence, persuade, or force another to react. We might agree to use the term in two complementary ways: Broadly, enactment can designate all behaviors of both parties in the analytic relationship, even verbal, in consequence of the intensification of the action intent of our words created by the constraints and regressive push induced by the analytic rules and frame. Patient and analyst are vulnerable to falling back on behaviors that actualize their intentions, doing so in ways motivated by and reflecting transference hopes, fears, and compromises shaped in their developmental past. Specifically, enactment can then be defined as those regressive (defensive) interactions between the pair experienced by either as a consequence of the behavior of the other. While nominally an interpersonal perspective, this concept of enactment facilitates more balanced attention to the involvement of both parties and to the intrapsychic dynamics in both that specifically shape their interactions. A clinical vignette illustrates the analyst's contributions to enactment, especially those reflecting his reactivated conflicts and their relation to his theoretical and technical preferences.
Article
Insight reflects the unitary nature of psychic activity in contrast to the fragmentation created in abstracting categories for the purpose of study and discussion. The unique analytic clinical dyad offers a structure in which intrapsychic fragments can be actualized and integrated. As a result, the analyst's contribution is more crucially one of exploration than of revelation. Whatever the area of examination, past or present, the link to analytic immediacy offers the opportunity to make meanings meaningful, to convert known facts to psychic truths. The analyst's clinical task requires his private self-analysis as part of the collaborative exploration of how the patient's mind works. Higher level ego functioning, including acutely active remembering, is at times transiently loosened in order for the analyst to share in the clinical work of discovery. The words the analyst uses to communicate his understanding convey only approximate manifest meanings, though they structurally reveal deeper messages of importance to the patient. These verbal approximations help stimulate self-reflection in the analysand as a step in the process of gaining insight.
Article
This communication focuses on the relation of countertransference to psychoanalytic technique, calling attention not to the more obvious forms of countertransference that have been commented on by previous writers on the subject, but to its subtler ones. Often well camouflaged within the framework of traditional, time-tested techniques, this aspect of countertransference may attach itself to our way of listening and thinking about patients, to our efforts at interpretation, to the process of working through, or to the complex issue of termination. Less recognizable than its more boisterous counterpart and in some respects less tangible, this side of the problem of countertransference is no less important. For it is precisely those subtle, often scarcely visible countertransference reactions, so easily rationalized as parts of our standard operating procedures and so easily overlooked, that may in the end have the greatest impact on our analytic work.