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When the modern history of psychoanalysis is written, the half century spanning the last quarter of the twentieth century and the first quarter of the current one may well be labeled the period in which the role of action in the psychoanalytic situation was recognized as a mode of communication equal in importance to verbalization.
Freud understood, of course, that action was an important component of treatment, a view he most clearly articulated in 1914.1 It is also true that, until the last part of the previous century, the concept of acting out was often employed to designate unthinking, driven behavior that escapes conscious recognition.
It was not until the term enactment entered our lexicon,2 however, that the behavioral aspects of communication in analysis became the focus of intense interest and investigation. Since that time, the phenomenon of enactment has been one of the most extensively explored, discussed, and utilized concepts in contemporary psychoanalysis.
In The Play within the Play, Gil Katz makes enactment the focus of his scholarly, informative, and important study. And when future historians seek to educate themselves about the history, development, and use of the term enactment, they will do no better than to consult this book. In a most readable and yet comprehensive way, it reviews, discusses, and expands the idea of enactment, so that it serves as both a scholarly resource for those interested in the concept, and a novel work in itself—one that sheds new light on enactments as an integral part of the analytic situation.