The empathic power of enactments: The link between neuropsychological processes and an expanded definition of empathy.

Abstract

In spite of the seeming experiential incongruity between enactments and empathy, clinical observations and recent neurobiological research are providing new ways to examine these two interjubjective processes and consequently expand our understanding of important empathic aspects embedded within enactments. Exploring interpersonal communication, neuroscience has started to delineate neuropsychological processes that similarly shape and underpin both enactments and therapeutic empathy; illuminating what mechanisms they have in common. Of particular interest are findings regarding mirror neurons and the right brain’s sensitivity to nonverbal aspects of emotional communication. These have greatly advanced our understanding of the ever-present nonconscious communication between people and its obvious implications for the inevitability of enactments within the psychoanalytic dyad. By allowing implicit relational and emotional patterns to be fully experienced within the analytic process, enactment enable both participants, and especially the analyst, attain an unmediated connection with what cannot be yet verbalized, a connection that essentially construes an empathic resonance. Furthermore, the analyst’s eventual awareness of the enactment and her disclosure of her participation in it create an empathic reflective space leading the patient to self-reflection, enhanced awareness and emotional integration.