Second thoughts on Agieren: listening to the enacted

Area of Science:

• Psychoanalysis
• Psychology
• Psychodynamic Theory

Background:

• Freud's theory of transference and Agieren (enactment) is a cornerstone of psychoanalysis.
• Existing interpretations of enactment often focus on non-represented psychic aspects.
• A need exists to explore alternative metapsychological frameworks for understanding enactment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose an expanded notion of Agieren, incorporating the concept of psychic gestures.
• To explore the metapsychological status and function of psychic gestures within the psychoanalytic process.
• To reframe enactment as a phenomenon rooted in the unconscious imaginary.

Main Methods:

• Metapsychological analysis of Freud's concept of Agieren.
• Introduction of psychic gestures as ideopictographic representations of emotional experience.
• Examination of unconscious registers and their role in reality processing via projective attribution.

Main Results:

• The psyche contains co-existing modalities for representing emotional experience: verbal and ideopictographic (psychic gestures).
• Psychic gestures represent unconscious but not repressed emotional states, processed through parental unconscious attribution.
• Enactment within the analytic setting is proposed as the playing out of the unconscious imaginary, represented by psychic gestures.

Conclusions:

• Psychic gestures offer a novel framework for understanding unconscious emotional representation and enactment in psychoanalysis.
• This expanded concept of Agieren moves beyond interpretations solely based on non-represented psychic elements.
• The analytic stage serves as a space for the enactment of the represented unconscious imaginary through psychic gestures.