ABSTRACT
In this essay I will begin with the proposition that the developmental principle of rupture and repair (Tronick, 1989) corresponds with an essential relational clinical principle, namely the great therapeutic importance we assign to working through enactments. Against this background I will try to make some general comments about the analyst’s role in enactments, and even more generally about the function of acknowledgment in relation to breakdowns. This perspective amplifies what I have previously written (Benjamin, 2004, 2009), about acknowledgment as an important aspect of recognition in the face of something we feel to be “failure”. I wish to specifically address the aspect of breakdown that involves the analyst’s subjectivity, her way of registering both the dyadic collapse into complementarity and her own contribution to it. I will stress the analyst’s shame at failing and guilt at causing pain or shame as well as how truthful acknowledgment can make an essential contribution to the shared third and to reciprocal survival. I highlight the effect of the analyst taking responsibility for her contribution, as a way of formulating her insights into the mutual dynamic while simultaneously helping to regulate the affect of both members of the dyad. I believe the early rejections of disclosure by the psychoanalytic mainstream misidentified the issue by explicitly 14focusing on what the patient “finds out” about the analyst. Far more important are the explicit parsing of enactment, and the implicit regulation and soothing that occur when the analyst confirms by acknowledging the patient’s perception. The confirmation, “this did happen”, affirms the value of confronting and embracing a consensual reality and bearing together the painful truth (by no means a final or absolute truth)—a vital third.
