The goals of contemporary psychoanalysis have been largely recast, deemphasizing symptom relief and character change and focusing on more fundamental yet elusive issues, like the quality of being itself. The interest shared by contemporary relational, progressive Freudian, and contemporary Kleinian authors in the concept of enactment holds promise for generating new models of therapeutic action to this end. Freud's description of the part played by day residue in the creation of dreams provides a basis for exploring formulations of energy and energy sharing between patient and analyst. This process, occurring by way of enactment, can facilitate the patient's breaking out of chronically crippling dynamics. A detailed clinical illustration emphasizes the analytic discipline that is essential to working with enactment as a largely nonverbal, mutually constructed clinical experience. The importance of the analyst's understanding the enactment is crucial; the advantage of discussing the enactment with the patient is, in certain instances, open to question.