Definition of the method.

1.

By now, enactments are defined in various ways. While KLUEWER (1995) regarded them as unconsciously driven messages in relationships, now a broader and more comprehensive definition is prevalent which include in equal parts unconscious and conscious aspects of enactments. In psychoanalytic body-focussed psychotherapy this broader definition of enactments is taken into account by validating the enactments’ impact both on their concrete and symbolic significance for the patient. This implies in terms of techniques in body-focussed psychotherapy that both unconscious and wittingly applied enactments (enactment interventions) are employed. However, in this broad definition of enactments, still at about 90 % are determined by unconscious elements. The „ conjoint implicit knowledge“ (D. Stern) is the place where the mutative effect in psychotherapy happens (J. Westram, in: Die Therapeutin als Realobjekt. In: Analytische Kinder- und Jugendpsychotherapie, Heft 130, Jg. 47/2, 2006 S. 209-237)

2.

In psychoanalytical body-focussed psychotherapy „ the free floating association regarding body expression, body experience and enactment is equally included in the therapeutic process as the verbal association is in the traditional (psychoanalytical) setting. In this process the experience of the body as an object turns into a subjective body awareness... By systematically and equally considering both the bodily experience and the mental experience, the patient’s space opens up for grasping and working on-together with the psychotherapist- inexpressable shaping experiences of his childhood as well as of his actual life. As soon as the sediments of pre-verbal experience get accessible in the construction of the actual reality, basic forms of perception, comprehension, understanding and treatment evolve. By applying motion-focussed and body-focussed techniques the psychic space of the unconscious can be increasingly taken advantage of, the analytical understanding can get more accentuated expanding the framework of psychotherapeutic interventions.“ (G. Heisterkamp, in: Psychodynamische Psychotherapien: Lehrbuch der tiefenpsychologisch orientierten Psychotherapien.  Hg. Reimer C. u. Rüger U., Springer-Verlag 2000, S. 302)