On Unconscious Communications and Covert Enactments: Some Reflections on Their Role in the Analytic Situation

Abstract

By means of an extended clinical example, this paper focuses on the impact that unconscious communications in the form of nonverbal behavior may have on the course and outcome of an analysis. Responding to sudden catastrophic illnesses in their fathers, patient and analyst created enactments aimed at blinding them to hard truths about their relationships with this parent. Serving as powerful resistances that led to a stalemate and all but ended treatment, these nonverbal enactments had to be recognized, confronted, and understood by both participants before analytic work could be resumed and progress achieved in this analysis.