Enactment and the treatment of abuse survivors

Regardless of the approach employed, treatment of patients with histories of sexual or other abuse is a formidable challenge. One reason for this is the vulnerability to "enactment" inherent in therapeutic work with such patients. Enactment is a recently elaborated psychoanalytic notion, defined as a pattern of nonverbal interactional behavior between the two parties in a therapeutic situation, with unconscious meaning for both. It involves mutual projective identification between therapist and patient. This paper clarifies the nature of enactment (conceptualized here as involving either refusal or actualization of the transference by the therapist) and its treatment implications. Transference-countertransference enactment paradigms encountered in work with survivors of abuse are presented. The therapeutic consequences of failing to recognize and respond to such enactments in work with these patients are explored. Unrecognized enactments may lead therapists unwittingly to abdicate the therapeutic role by becoming abusive, abused or vicariously traumatized, excessively guilty, seductive, overinvolved, and/or exhortatory or to implant false memories. Ways of utilizing enactment to advance treatment are also described and illustrated.