Continuation of Opening Phase to Early Middle Phase

Fourth Year Adult Psychoanalytic Training (APT)
2020-21, 2nd Trimester — Fridays, 3:30-5:00pm
Diane Wolman, MSW
Scot Gibson, MD

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January 15, 2021 — The Analytic Field: Enactments II

Presenter: Diane Wolman, MSW

[46 pages]

These three articles on enactments, while coming from slightly different vantage points, all deal with the importance of the affective component of “repair” as an important part of the analytic relationship. Bromberg focuses on the centrality of self-states and dissociation. He does a nice job of explaining how figuring things out together, an essential part of intersubjectivity, helps analysands’ minds to disentangle themselves from painful memories of feeling “small” and “stupid.” He includes analysts in this healing scenario when we are able to “hang in” relationally rather than feeling overcome by shame and seeing enactments as a failure of proper technique or evidence of new pathology. Chused makes the case for the centrality of the intersubjective affective relationship, pointing out that it is the patient’s transference and psychic reality that usually dominates and it is the transference-laden messenger who is usually heard and not the message. Note her discussion of non-verbal communication and the element of surprise as a pivotal aspect of some therapeutic change. Maroda focuses on self-disclosure of the analyst’s affect as an essential element of both minimizing and resolving enactments because it completes the cycle of affective communication.

Bromberg, P.M. (2010). Minding the Dissociative Gap. Contemp. Psychoanal., 46(1)19-31.

Chused, J.F. (1996). The Patient’s Perception of the Analyst’s Countertransference. Canadian J. Psychoanal., 4(2):231-253.

 Maroda, K.J. (2020). Deconstructing Enactment. Psychoanalytic Psychology 37(1): 8-17.