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the royal road to the insight of the unrepressed unconscious; this unconscious, although not representable verbally, is in the form of imaginary registers of emotional experience, which the author calls “psychic gestures”. (Sapisochin, 2007, 2013, 2014, 2015). Most of the European authors think that the analyst’s enactment is a consequence of a patient’s acting-out or enactment. Therefore, enactment describes a fact not only linked to the analyst but also to the patient; and possibly among some European analysts there is a predominant use of the concept for both analyst and patient. Although when referring to the latter some authors speak of “pressure” or “acting out” of the patient to drag the analyst into enactment. They also consider enactment as something, at least partially, inevitable before understanding what is going on between patient and analyst, (Pick, 1985; Carpy, 1989; O’Shaughnessy, 1989; Feldman, 1994; Steiner, 2000, 2006a). In French psychoanalysis the term ‘acting out’ (which is translated as ‘passage à l’acte ’ -Mijolla, 2013) is fairly common, while the term ‘enactment’ is rarely used. However, analytic situations similar to what in other psychoanalytic communities is referred to as ‘enactment’ are taken into account: they are usually defined using expressions such as ‘mise en scène ’ or ‘mise en jeu ’. Gibeault (2014) has used the neologism ‘énaction’ to describe a kind of acting in behavior and words endowed with a transformational capacity through a countertransferential ‘enactive empathy’ ( empathie énactante ). Italian De Marchi (2000) and Zanocco et al. (2006) as well view empathy, more precisely ‘sensory empathy’, belonging to the area of primary bond, as a basic instrument for communication close to enactment. Green considers “énaction” as an attack on the setting (Green, 2002) Also in the French language area, Belgian authors Godfrind-Haber and Haber (2002) write extensively about a concept related to enactment in ‘ L’expérience agie partagée ’ (‘shared acted experience’), which stresses the value of ’shared unconscious inter-psychic action’. It can be viewed as a pre-symbolic preparatory phase, during which the patient can make a ‘symbolic leap’ towards recovery of symbolization, so that later interpretations can be experienced as meaningful. Developments of the concept of countertransference among European analysts imply descriptions of inadequate analyst’s reactions from the pressure of the patient’s transference. The concept of projective identification allows understanding of the dynamic of these processes. Sandler, with his contribution of role-responsiveness and B. Joseph, with the deepening in the patient-analyst relationship with the concept of “total transference situation”, are some of the authors describing phenomena close to enactment. Steiner clarifies the relationship between countertransference and enactment: “I think of the emotional and intellectual availability as countertransference and the transformation into action as enactment” (Steiner, 2006b, p.326). In Europe, as in the Americas, most analysts have come to consider enactments inevitable, as was once the case with with transference and countertransference. However, contrary to wide range of opinions in the Americas as to the usefulness, desirability and manner of working with enactments, most European analysts, seeing enactments as essentially a failure
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