Enactment, Companioning and Narration in Psychoanalysis and Group Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis and group treatment afford the opportunity to evoke early, unsymbolized, and non-represented trauma, neglect, and yet-to-be-suffered breakdown. When the analyst and group leader can unobtrusively make the space for the emergence of these phenomena, the unspoken and unmetabolized can take shape in the language of enactment, impact, and deep inner resonance between patient and analyst or within the group field. Rather than seeking to bring patients out of these states of pain and dysregulation or regard them as resistances, the analyst can companion the patient and the group within these dark and undifferentiated spaces. This work asks the analyst to hold and metabolize powerful states that evoke his or her own trauma and loss. When known and companioned, early loss, neglect, and breakdown find narrative shape in action and can finally find an address and be transformed. This presentation will fill out this approach and offer vivid examples from both individual and group psychoanalysis.