For many therapists it has replaced previous action terms such as acting in and acting out. Something new has been captured by this concept: a recognition of a process that may involve words but goes beyond words. For some, enactment addresses a continuous undercurrent in the interaction between patient and therapist in the realm of intersubjectivity. Others ask whether this concept adds either clarity or a new perspective to the clinical situation. This volume addresses the questions: Does the current focus on enactments entail a shift in our model of therapeutic change? Are enactments essential? Can they be dangerous, and if so, under what circumstances? Enactment is essential reading for all psychotherapists.

Based on a long term qualitative study of four 'ordinary' secondary schools, and working on the interface of theory with data, this book explores how schools enact, rather than implement policy.

This book is recommended to psychoanalysts and therapists interested in the analytical technique, and particularly that work with patients who have deficits in their symbolization capacity. It presents studies of technical aspects of the analytical process with patients who are difficult to reach. Collusions named 'chronic enactments' show that the analytic dyad cannot dream and the analytical field is paralyzed without the analyst perceiving it. Chronic enactments are undone through unconscious acts or behaviours that threaten to destroy the analytical process: behaviours that are named 'acute enactments'. The thorough study of these enactments show that they take the dyad to an awareness of the discrimination between self and object and re-establish the capacity to dream. It is demonstrated that this occurs in an attenuated traumatic form, revealing in the analytical field the externalization of primitive non-dreamed traumas. Clinical, artistic, and mythical models are part of the discussion. The emphasis on clinical aspects allows readers to use different theories to consider the clinical facts. The clinical theories used by the author are mostly post-Kleinian and Bionian.

This Handbook covers all the many aspects of cognitive therapy both in its practical application in a clinical setting and in its theoretical aspects. Since the first applications of cognitive therapy over twenty years ago, the field has expanded enormously. This book provides a welcome and readable overview of these advances.