The Untelling

This paper builds on the idea that enactment is a form of narration in action. Drawing on Scarfone's concept of the "unpast" I describe mutual enactment as an "untelling" that narrates that which has been locked in endless repetition. The untelling is also an un-telling, an undoing of prior translations, a "dissolution" of ways of being and an attempt to find the breakdown that is always feared. Following Laplanche, I distinguish between "filled-in enactment," available to be understood and known, and "hollowed-out enactment" that opens a world of the unknowable, archaic sexual, within analyst and patient. Only when the hollow of the patient meets the hollow of the analyst can the work of re-translation and the instantiation of time and the past take hold. I offer a detailed description of my work with a patient to illustrate these different modes of enactment and the construction of the past and subjectivity.