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What is your definition of enactment? How does your definition differ from previous psychoanalytic concepts such as acting out, acting in, and counter-transference actions?
I think of the term enactment as a synonym for the word action. As a psychoanalytic term it refers to action taken by an analyst and/ or analysand within or outside the analytic situation. From the perspective of compromise formation theory (Brenner, 1982, 1994), action, like all human behavior, including thinking and analyzing, is understood to be motivated by fantasies. Those fantasies are thought of as compromises between forbidden wishes for pleasure, unpleasure in the form of anxiety and/ or depressive affect, and defensive efforts to reduce unpleasure.
This conference reflects, in part, an effort to respond to and consider the interactive elements of the analytic situation. I understand the analyst's and analysand's personalities as one shaping factor that influences their fantasies and the resulting verbal and nonverbal behaviors in and outside of the analytic situation. My emphasis is on the analyst using his or her fantasies in the service of understanding the patient.
The terms acting out and acting in are less useful to me today than they were thirty years ago. They reflect terms of an outmoded