Response to Drs. Ellman and Renik

I am grateful to Drs. Ellman and Renik for clarifying their positions. Ellman's mention of the role of quiet enactments as well as more obtrusive ones did not come across clearly to me in light of his discussion of the importance of intense transference-countertransference interactions. I welcome his correction.

Dr. Renik's emphasis on the ubiquity of enactments and his statement about the pejorative attitude toward enactments often taken by classical analysts does not, in my view, speak to the necessity of clarifying how enactments function either to advance the analytic process or to retard it. When, in 1986, I coined the term enactments, part of my purpose in doing so was to try to find a word that would not have the same kind of pejorative connotation as did acting out. My impression is that this effort was partially successful and that most analysts now view enactments as complex behaviors containing a number of intersecting elements. Dr. Renik's contributions have been important in helping to disconnect the idea of enactments from the kind of judgmental attitude that was evoked by the term acting out. While this development is certainly welcome, it does not relieve us of the responsibility of trying to explore the ways that enactments function intrapsychically for patient and analyst and in that way become better able to distinguish enactments that are useful from those enactments, often containing troublesome countertransference reactions, that impede the analytic work.