Chapter 5 Some Reflections on the Concept of Enactment

The concept of enactment is currently very much in the psychoanalytic air. Indeed, it qualifies as a ‘buzz word’. That is, using it establishes the analyst as up-to-date, if not avant-garde—or so the analyst hopes. This being so, some conceptual working through is called for; otherwise ‘enactment’ may lose its value in the psychoanalytic vocabulary. I shall begin with a much-needed discussion of the conceptual boundaries of enactment; then describe its clinical manifestations, overuse and vicissitudes in different schools of psychoanalytic thought; and conclude with some summarizing comments. My goal is to provide a step towards clarification and consistency of discourse, not to attempt the final word on the topic. In psychoanalysis, as in all other disciplines, there never has been, and never will be, a final word on any topic.

It is most useful when enactment is not considered just another term for what Freud called acting out, or for what is sometimes called acting in when referring to events within the analytic session. Freud (1914) used ‘acting out’ to refer to instances when memories were performed in current life rather than remembered. He saw this performance as a sign of resistance on the one hand, and of the need to repeat on the other.

Freud emphasized the therapeutic importance of recovering early pathogenic memories. That recovery was to be effected by reducing infantile amnesia through the analysis of resistance (Freud 1912). Freud never relinquished this emphasis on the curative power of remembering. His topographic model of mental functioning, neurosogenesis and the analytic process had a permanent, although not exclusive, hold on his thinking (see for example his ‘Outline of psycho-analysis’, 1940).

Later on, ‘acting out’ has been carelessly used by some analysts and others to imply being bad, specifically by getting oneself, the analyst or the analysis into administrative, emotional or legal difficulties. On the whole, this cor