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In her articulate and thought-provoking presentation, Michelle Price focused on the discursive, regulatory practices and social networks in which analyst and patient are located in the work of analysis. Aiming toward examining the force of enactments as they occur in analysis, she specifically addressed the issue of power, how it is assigned to the person and speech of the analyst, and the ways in which this impacts both the patient and the analytic work. According to Price, a theory of enactments considers how events and experiences may not be linguistically coded due to various discursive orders as well as the power/knowledge factors inherent in mini-and macrocultural and relational contexts. In analysis, individuals may enact those unconscious aspects of the self as represented in other interactions. Since the analyst is not just a neutral participant in these enactments, his/her own subjectivity inherently impacts such enactments, their constitutions and interpretations. To buttress her thinking, Price gave much attention to the importance of linguistic utterances as they occur within the analytic dyad, by citing the works of contemporary theorists such as Bakhtin, Renik, and Mitchell. Going further, Price elaborated upon the contemporary stance on countertransference as having moved from a place of being seen as a hindrance to now being viewed as a vehicle for deeper understanding of both intrapsychic and interpersonal dynamics—especially in terms of the role countertransference takes in the working of an analytic enactment.
Focusing on discourse, marginalization, and power within the analytic dyad—all ideas of importance within the postmodern perspective of psychoanalysis—Price cited many ideologists working in this frame, but especially emphasized Hoffman's work on culture and the interpersonal field of the analytic space. According to Hoffman, “what is known or discovered about the patient is always in relation to