Enactment: Rediscovering a new psychoanalytic technique in an old Freudian text

Area of Science:

• Psychoanalytic theory
• Psychic development
• Clinical psychology

Background:

• Freud's 1914 paper introduced "acting out" (Agieren) and "compulsion to repeat" (Zwange zur Wiederholung).
• These concepts suggested an implicit theory of psychic development and psychoanalytic technique.
• This implicit theory remained underdeveloped in psychoanalysis for decades.

Purpose of the Study:

• To re-examine Freud's concepts of Agieren and compulsion to repeat.
• To propose "enactment" as a method for accessing unconscious early experiences.
• To explore how enactment facilitates psychic transformation within the analytic relationship.

Main Methods:

• Re-reading Freud's 1914 paper "Remembering, Repeating and Working Through".
• Analyzing the concepts of Agieren and compulsion to repeat.
• Conceptualizing "enactment" as a bridge to unconscious psychic material.

Main Results:

• Freud's work implies a psyche with registers of early experiences inaccessible to consciousness.
• Enactment provides access to these intrasubjective registrations of early intersubjective interactions.
• Transference-countertransference dynamics allow for joint dramatization and transformation of relational scripts.

Conclusions:

• Enactment is crucial for accessing and transforming unconscious early experiences.
• The analytic dyad co-creates new psychic material through working through relational scripts.
• Freud's early concepts offer a foundation for understanding psychic development and therapeutic change.