This paper describes enactments in the countertransference - spanning fantasies, actions, words and sexual responses to patients. It will explore the origins and reverberations of the analyst's enactments in an effort to understand whether they have obstructed progress or created special moments in the therapy where shifts in the patients' inner world, or further understanding on the part of the analyst could be created.

Clinical vignettes will be used from work with several patients, although the analyst will focus mainly on work with patients who present with hysterical personality. The paper is an endeavour to tease out what, if any, differences there may be in working with hysterical patients, as opposed to patients with other personality types, in the nature of countertransference enactments. The author examines the role of rescue fantasies in the c reation of an enactment.