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September 14, 1991
We are indebted to Dr. Rosen for reminding us that, in the interpersonal world so familiar to students of family therapy, important observations have long since been made about "enactments."
Minuchin's use of the term in 1974 to point to overt interpersonal transactions within the family group puts emphasis on his perception that enactment provided experiential access to latent underlying "family structure" that could not be revealed through cognitive discourse alone. His technical approach and conceptualization of these matters at the group level seem indeed consonant with what I attempted to describe for the analytic dyad. We have aligned our views along a spectrum of shared perspectives, with some of us tending to our own narrow band more than is optimal.
Doctor Rosen is right on in her observation that some of us must struggle to comprehend conceptually what we have long been aware of clinically—that we work always in the web of human relationships as we try to sound intrapsychic depths. Put differently, it is good to hear and recognize a voice, and hear its echo, from the other side of the thicket.