The term was first introduced by Theodore Jacobs (1986) to describe the re-actualization of unsymbolized and unconscious emotional experiences involved in the relationship between the patient and the therapist.
[1] More precisely, Jacobs refers to the countertransference enactment, highlighting the implications of the personality characteristics, affective frame, representations and analyst's conflicts for the patient and the interactional behaviour.
In relational psychoanalysis, the concept of enactment is usually used to explain the re–experience of a role assumed during childhood, which is recited on the stage of the analyst's consulting room.
In the perspective of relational psychoanalysis, the central aspect of therapeutic change is given by the liberation of the patient and the analyst from the repetitive unconscious patterns due to the reflective awareness' acquisition of the relational interchange and the contribution of both parties.
Traumatized patients tend to bond with their therapists not so much through words as through enactments, expressing unconsciously—by the action—the dissociated aspects of the self and the object representation.