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It is the attitude, the inner conviction which finds the necessary technique.
«Patience» should be retained without «irritable reaching after fact and reason» until a pattern «evolves».
The possibility of making a clear distinction among the concepts of acting out, action and enactment in child analysis comes up against a number of difficulties, and not only in terms of terminology. As child analysis is so «animated» and in the end acted out it can appear arduous, if not impossible, to distinctly distinguish one concept from the other. In addition, the implicitly evaluative and superegoic aura in particular which often accompanies them is alien to me.
As in a game of figure/ground, each time one attempts to isolate and define the terms in question, one seems in certain moments to have almost grasped their contours, but then they get mixed up again. However, I consider that it may be possible to outline a fluid differentiation of the concepts, based on references both to a mode of mental functioning and to the specifics of child analysis technique. I would propose considering them as «configurations in movement», which, being such, should be described not as static entities but rather as «figures in transformation». I will begin from my clinical experience and the relationship of continuity which I feel exists between child analysis and adult analysis even in these issues.