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of the psychological past of both parties in the analytic situation. Jacobs’ concept of enactment resonates with Winnicott’s (1963) somewhat paradoxical notion that, if the analysis goes well and the transference deepens, the patient will get the analyst to fail him as needed in the area of normal infantile omnipotence, i.e., in the transference. However, Jacobs was not the first. Hans Loewald had used the term earlier, in “Psychoanalysis as an Art and the Fantasy Character of the Psychoanalytic Situation” (1975). He wrote that, “…[the] process in which patient and analyst are engaged with each other … involves a re-enactment, a dramatization of aspects of the patient’s psychic life history, created and staged in conjunction with, and directed by, the analyst”. (p. 278-9) The patient and analyst co-create illusion within the transference neurosis. The patient takes the lead in the fantasy recreation, as if in a stage play. The analyst’s role is multidimensional. He or she is both the director and also different characters in the patient’s life. The patient and analyst are co-authors of this drama, which is experienced both as fantasy and actuality. Instead of simply assuming the roles, the analyst reflects them back and eventually the patient gains access to his or her inner life and gradually takes over the directorship, the script. Aristotle’s “imitation of action in the form of action” would in psychoanalytic terms be both re-enactment and repetition. Schafer (1982), a colleague of Loewald at the time, also believed that multiple self narratives or “storylines” could be recognized as differing versions of an analysand’s basic story played out with an analyst (say, dramas of imprisonment, rebirth, or oedipal rivalry). Sandler (1976) drew attention to mutual induction between the members of a dyad and the spontaneous responses by the analyst to the patient’s unconscious stimuli, which he called role-responsiveness . Gradually the idea of enactment became more widely used and discussions on the topic became more common in the psychoanalytical literature (McLaughlin, 1991; Chused, 1991; Roughton, 1993; McLaughlin & Johan, 1992; Ellman & Moskovitz, 1998; Panel, 1999). For some, enactment simply replaced the term acting out, although we should recall that acting out is the English equivalent of the German word Agieren . In German “ er agiere es ” is the original for “but acts it out” (... [T]he patient does not remember anything of what he has forgotten and repressed, but acts it out.” Freud, 1914. p. 149). In some psychoanalytical cultures the term acting out began to refer to more or less occasional and impulsive acts that broke into the expected free association, thus restricting the concept of Agieren . At the same time, the term came into use to label behaviors of impulsive and psychopathic personalities. The moralistic connotations of acting out contaminated the language of professionals in mental health and in law. The replacement of the term acting out with enactment aimed at eliminating the conceptual confusion and pejorative aspects of the term.
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