Narrative representation, narrative enactment, and the psychoanalytic construction of history

Abstract

This paper develops the idea that the fundamental tension between representation and enactment described by psychoanalytic historical theories also determines and limits our theorizing attempts themselves. Freud moves toward this recognition in his late work as he brings a challenge to the lifting-of-repression model of historical recovery. One basis of this challenge is that Freud now implicates the analyst, as well as the analysand, in the tension between the capacity of historical narratives to represent the past, and their tendency to enact it. From the perspective of Freud's explicitly dialogic model in 'Constructions in analysis', the task of establishing historical reference in psychoanalysis cannot be separated from the narrative actions of the analyst. These narrative actions would necessarily include manifestations of denial and disavowal that I designate as 'narrative enactments'. My discussion expands upon this linguistic dimension of questions Freud raises about the limits of the psychoanalytic construction of history. Narrative enactments work against an interpretive restoration of historical reference based upon the lifting of repression, but at the same time, seen as an aspect of narrative functioning, they are founding acts upon which our historical constructions rest.