INTERSUBJECTIVITY AND NEUROSCIENCE Understanding Enactments and Their Therapeutic Significance Within Emerging Paradigms

Evolving views of enactments as interpersonal manifestations of dissociated relational styles are increasingly finding support in attachment studies and neuro scientific research. Understanding enactments as an aspect of the intersubjective process and as the ultimate communicators of the patient’s neurally encoded early experiences, this paper examines what enactments convey, and explores their interpersonal and neural underpinnings. Unconsciously triggered and communicated within the intersubjective interaction, enactments reveal the participants’ implicit, neurally encoded relational and emotional patterns that inevitably come alive within the analytic dyad. It is suggested that the analyst’s eventual self-awareness of her own participation, followed by self-disclosure of her experience, promote a conscious, verbally articulated encounter with the patient’s unconscious relational styles, creating opportunities for emotional and neural integration.