'Falling from Grace' -- When Consultants Go Out of Role:

Enactment in the Service of Organizational Consultancy

Rose Redding Mersky

Published in: Socio-Analysis (2001) 3, 37-53

Winner, William Alanson White Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy annual
prize for best paper on applied psychoanalysis
June, 2000

Originally presented at the annual symposium of the

International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations
Toronto, Canada June 25, 1999

"The analyst must do 'bad' work before 'good' is done."

Hirsch, 1996, p. 369

“Crudely put, an enactment in analysis occurs when the patient starts to sneeze
and the analyst reaches for a Kleenex. The event thus has meaning for both
parties.”
Dervin 1996, p. 149

Introduction

I am an organizational development consultant who uses psychoanalytic thinking in my

consultation work. While I have had an analysis, I do not come to these explorations from
a clinical training background. I do, however, use my experience as an analysand as a
major resource for how I conceptualize my role, my role relationship with my clients, and
the consultative stance. In so doing, I do not think from a psychotherapeutic model, but
rather from an organizational one, recognizing that organizations and their dynamics are
not equivalent to the dyadic analytic relationship.

This paper is an exploration of a psychoanalytic concept (enactment), which -- in my

view -- has the potential to illuminate the working relationship between consultant and
organizational client. I am not attempting to apply this concept wholeheartedly to
organizational consultation, but rather to suggest a way that it could be thought of as a
source of thinking and conceptualizing for consultants using the psychoanalytic model.

In thinking about my consultative stance, I use many models -- one of which is the
analytic role ideal. I think of this ideal as follows: observe clear and appropriate

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boundaries; maintain an appropriately bounded role and set of role relationships; manage
and learn from countertransferential feelings toward the client system; and work -- in
Bion’s (1967, p. 17) terms -- without "memory and desire". The consultant attempts to
function as a non-threatening 'container' for the client's projections and -- through them
and other sources of data, both organizationally objective and emotionally internal --
develop an understanding of the underlying issues and dynamics in the system.

This task, however, is not altogether easy. As Piterman (1999, p. 2) observes:

The process of working through what we have introjected, making sense of the
data and feeding it back in a constructive way is the task of the consultant.
Working in this way is neither smooth, nor linear, nor does it follow a casual path.
It involves working with ambiguity, inconsistencies and uncertainty.

Thus, despite conscious intentions to the contrary, organizational consultants using the
psychoanalytic perspective can and do go out of role in their work. This is generally
viewed as a mistake in practice stimulated by the dynamics in the system projected onto
the consultant that requires acknowledgment and exploration. This experience can be an
opportunity to 'work through' one's faltering (but potentially illuminating) role
relationship and -- in understanding those dynamics -- resume an appropriate role
relationship with the client.

The question posed by this paper is: given that in actual practice all of us do (at least
occasionally if not momentarily) 'fall out of role,' is there something to be learned from
such a 'fall from grace.' In fact -- to further stretch the argument -- is there an actual
value in falling out of role, firstly in opening up the possibilities for how we work with
our clients and secondly to access data about our client organizations only available
through such an 'error' of practice?

The theoretical underpinnings of such thinking come from the concept of enactment,
initiated by the interpersonal school of psychoanalysis (Sullivan, Thompson, Fromm,
etc.) but now shared by a range of analytic thinkers. According to this thinking, the
analyst, rather than being a neutral projective screen or a Winnicotian good enough
mother, is always unwittingly (you could say unconsciously) interacting with the patient.
The patient and analyst are seen as two subjective participants undergoing a shared
experience and constantly affecting one another.

In such a relationship, both patient and analyst become engaged in what is termed a
transference/countertransference 'matrix’, in which the analyst is caught up in the
powerful unconscious dynamics in the dyad. Conceptually, this process is thought of as a
repetition of the “old and bad interactions” (Hirsch 1996, p. 365) from the patient's past
in which core intrapsychic issues are revealed and played out in mutual interaction.

The work of the analysis in the psychotherapeutic context is to bring this enactment
experience to light and in so doing reveal to both patient and analyst important material

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otherwise unavailable in the process. Thus the analysis itself evolves from the living out
of these interactions to a process that ultimately leads to mutative or corrective action in
the patient. To some psychoanalytic thinkers, this process is not only inevitable, but
necessary for productive analytic work.

In applying this conceptual frame to organizational consultation, one way to view the
various ways in which consultants are pulled out of role is to see them as enactments of
key organizational issues. For the consultant to embrace this data and to find a way to
work this through with the client -- rather than to judge or deny his/her behavior -- opens
the possibility for accessing potentially unacknowledged information about the
organization, otherwise experienced but not 'known.' (Bollas, 1989)

I will describe the conceptual basis and historic roots of enactment theory, a framework
by which to apply this thinking to consultation, and present case material.

The Conceptual Basis of Enactment Theory

Enactment theory has its roots in Sullivan’s (1953) interpersonalist notion of the
'participant observer' – the analyst who is not a separate, neutral and objective figure, but
rather one who is in interaction with his/her patient on an “inevitable and continuous”
basis (Aron, 1996, p.194). Analyst and patient are engaged in a mutual, shared process,
though they are not equal participants nor do they have the same roles. The analyst is,
after all, “trained to use personal experience as a vehicle for inquiry” (Hirsch, 1996,
p.364) from which the patient will presumably benefit. The analyst’s
countertransferential reactions to the patient – rather than serving as impediments to
effective treatment or a sign of incompetence – are instead valued as important sources of
data about the internal world of the patient.

This notion of an interactive relationship between patient and analyst has led to the idea
that the person of the analyst himself impacts the patient's transference experience. This
notion is an extension of Searles' (1975, p. 103) emphasis on the real personhood of the
analyst or "those real increments of the analyst's personality-functioning which serve, for
the patient, as the nuclei of external reality and evoke his transference reactions". In fact,
Searles extends this concept to emphasize the ways in which not only the patient, but the
analyst himself evolves, referring to it as a "mutually growth-enhancing symbiosis"
(ibid., p. 98).

Rather than thinking of the patient’s transference experience and the analyst’s
countertransference experience as separate processes, the patient and analyst are
considered to be engaged in what is termed a transference/countertransference matrix. By
the very nature of this mutually unconscious process "the analyst becomes enmeshed in a
reciprocal countertransference neurosis" (Hirsch 1996, pp.370-71). The raw material
fueling this matrix is the unconscious issues in the patient -- “the internalized
interpersonal dramas that characterize the patient's life and life history" (ibid., p. 364). At
the heart of this interplay is the mutually unconscious repetition of old patterns in the

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client’s psyche, which Jacobs, as Hirsch summarizes, views as “the core of the
psychoanalytic situation” (ibid., p. 377).

What is an enactment? An enactment is an 'event' that takes place in the treatment

situation in which the analyst experiences him/herself as engaged in activity that
somehow feels wrong. As a signal, the analyst’s attention may be drawn to a behavior or
an affect that is out of the due course of the familiar. Jacobs (1991, p.108), for example,
describes how he noticed himself "touching my right ear, lightly fingering the lobe and
then stroking the bone behind the ear" which was not one of his usual “'listening
movements'”.

By its very nature, an enactment involves an act. It happens unwittingly and in the
moment, with the participation of both analyst and patient. As Jacobs (ibid., p. 32)
observes: "There is … a compelling quality to enactments, which derives, I believe,
from the fact that such behavior is not the outcome of rational thought and judgment".
Chused (1997, pp. 265-6) calls it "a jointly created interaction, fueled by unconscious
psychic forces in both patient and analysis. ... The analyst does not 'choose' to enact; he
enacts and then thinks, 'Oh my God, why did I do or say that?' ”.

Enactments carry tremendous potential value for the treatment process itself because they
have the potential to reveal to both analyst and analysand deeper psychic processes
otherwise out of awareness. As Jacobs (1991, p. 49) articulates:

Along with other cues, both verbal and otherwise, that arise in the treatment
situation, they [enactments] function as signals that we rely on to tell us what is
stirring just beneath the surface of the waters; and as such, they serve as
indispensable guides in our efforts to explore the subtle and pervasive interactions
between patient and analyst that form the core of the analytic process.

Enactments are "pathways for communication in the analytic situation” that may
otherwise go unrecognized. As unconscious communications between patient and
analyst, they “flow from both sides of the couch and are very much a two-way street”
(ibid., p. 31). Not only do they, in Schafer’s view, “convey the fantasies that dominate the
analysand’s conscious and unconscious experience of the conduct of both parties to the
analytic relationship” (Aron 1996, p. 202), they provide a kind of harbinger of the deeper
analytic work as yet to be undertaken in the treatment process. As Jacobs (1991, p. 49)
puts it:

This is the way with enactments. As communications of the greatest importance

in analysis, they often express what is not yet otherwise expressible. As nonverbal
conveyors of rising memories, concealed resistances and fantasies waiting to see
the light of day, they are avant-garde messengers that anticipate and signal what is
to come.

Some theorists see an active aspect to this process and view the patient as subtly and
often unconsciously trying to persuade or force the analyst into some sort of reciprocal

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action. According to Sandler (1976, pp. 43-44), patients will attempt to “manipulate or to
provoke situations with others which are a concealed repetition of earlier experiences and
relationships” in order to get the analyst to “play out a particular role” (Aron 1996,
p.196). Levenson (cited in Sandler, p. 45) sees the analyst as quickly and unwittingly
transforming him or herself into a responsive second party, thus actualizing the
transference through the analyst’s “role responsiveness” .

In some ways, the term enactment has developed as a constructive alternative to the term
'acting out,' which has traditionally referred to that which in one way or another interferes
with the course of the analytic treatment. From an earlier conceptual split between action
and thinking, a patient’s acting out was seen as preventing him/her from taking in the
interpretations of the analyst. An analyst’s acting out was seen as some lapse in
technique. While acting out has generally been viewed as an individual action, rather than
a mutual one, Boesky (1982, p. 52) sees it as “the potential of the transference neurosis
for actualization [which] therefore expresses the psychic reality of the transference”. As
the notion of the interactive nature of the analytic relationship developed, there was a
need to think about the constructive role of action in the analytic process, thus the
evolution of the concept of enactment.

In an enactment, the analyst (together with the patient) engages in some activity that in
some way draws him or her out of role. Whether this is 'acting out' and a lapse in
technique and practice, or a potentially valuable part of the treatment process is for the
analyst and patient to collectively examine. How the insight from these enactments is
used by the analyst with the patient to increase understanding is not much discussed. It is
generally agreed that insight always comes afterwards. ("we can only see ourselves in the
rearview mirror" (Renik, 1997, p. 282). Thus Jacobs becomes conscious of stroking his
ear only after he has been doing so for a period of time. When one or the other party
begins to be aware of the mutually repetitive process, it can be explored productively for
new meaning. "Thus, the heart of the analysis is the postenactment addressing of what
has occurred between patient and analyst" (Hirsch, 1996, p. 372).

To some thinkers (e.g. Jacobs, Renik, Levenson), enactments are seen as an inevitable
and critical component of the analytic process. They make it possible for some of the
deeper analytic issues of the patient -- which can only be illuminated and worked through
in this process -- to be addressed and resolved. Enactment experiences are seen as being
essential to mutative change and development. Hirsch (1997, p.290) summarizes this
view: "I believe that analytic change is unlikely unless both parties live through old,
repetitive patterns of the patient, emerge eventually to new relational configurations, and
jointly analyze that process". Otherwise "repetition proceeds interminably and nothing is
worked through for the patient” (Hirsch 1996:361).

This perspective is based on the view that there is value to err in the way one takes up the
traditional role of analyst and participate “in a manner he had not intended" (ibid., p.366).
Hirsch (1996, p. 369) summarizes it this way: “the analyst must do ‘bad’ work before
‘good’ is done … The analyst must be emotionally engaged in order for the analysis to
succeed; that is, the analyst must fail in maintaining an analytic attitude" (ibid., p.366).

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Renik goes further, as summarized by Hirsch (ibid., p. 369): "the analyst's unwitting
engagement with the patient is necessary for productive work". This revolutionizes the
notion of the analytic process from the earliest classical view that whatever took place in
the treatment situation between the parties somehow interfered with the truly technical
work of giving and taking the interpretations of the objective, neutral analyst.

Hirsch (1996, p.365)summarizes the three basic features of the contemporary

interpersonal approach:

I. The patient and analyst always affect one another

II. Countertransference enactment and/or intense emotional engagement on the

part of the analyst are inevitable and necessary for productive analytic work. The
analyst must become unwittingly lost in the interactional process.

III. Countertransference is often discovered post enactment or post engagement.

This mutual enactment should always be analytically addressed.

Application of Enactment Theory to Organizational Consultation

In this attempt to apply enactment theory to organizational consultation, I am

differentiating this process from that of projective identification in the consulting
relationship. As Gilmore and Krantz (1985, p. 1161) note, projective identification is a
form of communication in which unwanted or uncomfortable feelings are somehow
induced in the other. In this manner, the consultant can find him or herself coming in
contact with aspects of the client system not otherwise made manifest or even as yet
known. The consultant -- in making contact with this experience and having the resources
of his/her colleagues -- can process this for understanding and often use this
understanding to inform the ongoing consultation, whether or not it is ever shared with
the client.

An enactment, however, involves an 'act' -- some action that takes place -- that BOTH
CLIENT and CONSULTANT take part in, however unwittingly in the here and now of
the consultation. The processing and learning takes place in the actual post-enactment
analysis with the client -- both in terms of what is learned (content) and what it reflects
about the working relationship with one another.

In thinking about the application of this theoretical perspective to the actual experience of
consultation, I have applied the following principles gleaned from the above summary:

1. Unlike projective identification -- in which something unwanted or unknown in the

client is projected onto the consultant or consulting team and later illuminated and
worked through -- an enactment involves an actual 'act.' Both consultant and client
jointly participate in this action.
2. The first 'signal' is often the experience of being somehow inappropriate or
uncomfortable in role.

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3. In hindsight, when the client and consultant talk about it they learn together --
through this process -- about some aspect of the system that hitherto had eluded them.
4. This process ultimately leads to mutative change and development in the client.
5. In the absence of such an experience, the 'acting out' will repeat itself over and over
again in the working relationship and the learnings may never become available.

Case Material

In order to illustrate how I am applying this concept to consultation, I will describe two
case examples. The first is from a colleague and the second is from my own practice.

Case #1: Lou, a colleague of mine, recently shared a disquieting experience with a role
client. His concern was that he had made an error in the consultation. His client, Joe, is an
architect and director of preservation of an architectural firm, whose highest profile work
is preservation.

In the course of a role consultation session, in response to Joe’s increasing passivity, Lou
found himself becoming more and more aggressive, directive and abusive. In reaction or
in partnership, Joe became more and more defensive. He said the session felt like an
“inquisition” and that Lou kept trying to “pin him down” for answers. They were
engaged in a repetitive cycle and were unable to extricate themselves.

As the session deteriorated, Lou realized that in this interaction he was taking on the role
of Frank, the managing director of the firm (whom he knew quite well). In the midst of
this experience he caught himself and said to Joe: "I overstepped my role." He realized
that it wasn't up to him to question Joe in detail about what he was doing. He had taken
on the role of a supervisor.

After sharing this awareness with the client, the dynamics in the dyad shifted. At first Joe
became aggressive in return. Later he remarked that the interaction between them
reminded him of other people’s reactions to him -- notably family members and Frank,
the managing director. In fact, as they continued to process the experience, they came to
realize that Lou’s intrusive and controlling behavior in the role session exactly paralleled
a larger organizational dynamic, particularly with regard to Frank's working relationship
with subordinates. Frank acts as if he is the center of a wagon wheel, often extending
beyond his partners to confront and question junior members of the firm. As such, he
actively 'jumps over' appropriate layers of authority, i.e. his direct reports, to “call on the
carpet” others in the firm, by incessantly quizzing them on their actions and activities.
While one or two of Frank's direct reports have occasionally challenged him, over time
most have simply allowed this pattern to continue.

The original presenting problem had to do with Joe's great difficulties in coping with
Frank's intrusive behavior. One of Lou's goals in the role consultation had been to help
Joe make more effective use of his immediate boss, Sally, as his supervisor and thereby
make it more possible for her to take up her role not only in supervising Joe, but in
communicating directly to Frank. After processing their difficult interaction, they began

7
to see the broader systemic forces that were continually undermining both Joe and Sally
in their ability to firmly take up their roles.

Since that session, Joe has been better able to deflect Frank's interference and to refer him
back to Sally for confirmation of requests or questions. He has managed to take more
authority for prioritizing his work assignments and to concentrate on one major project
each day. This improvement he attributes to the working session with the consultant.

In the subsequent discussions between myself and Lou, he began to realize that there was
something about the way his client was presenting himself that had 'caused' him to
respond the way he did -- despite his intentions not to (just as a patient can provoke the
analyst to take a certain role.) As Joe’s passivity increased during the course of the
session, Lou became more and more directive and controlling.

In addition, in processing this experience, Lou feels he has a better understanding of

Frank, who sees himself as a parental figure taking care of the needs of his staff. Because
he heads up the organization, however, others are reluctant to react as openly and
defiantly to him as Joe did to Lou. If someone were to point out to Frank that his
behavior is intrusive and controlling, he’d say that's the last thing he'd want to be (which
is exactly how Lou felt in this interaction). Thus the partners avoid the confrontation and
the dynamic continues in the system. At the same time, the consultant could better
understand what Frank experiences in interacting with Joe; often he just throws up his
hands in exasperation.

Case #2: The second case comes from my experience with a current client, Roger, a
psychologist and clinical director of a day treatment center that provides educational and
therapeutic activities for elementary-aged children. Roger contacted me regarding his
concern about the lack of collaboration and cooperation between himself and the school's
principal, Mary, who reported to him. In his view, there was a pervasive mistrust between
them, and they were not functioning as a strong unit in running the center. In particular,
there were tremendous tensions regarding what was and was not appropriate in this
environment, tensions he attributed to their difference in professional background -- she
being a professional educator and he a clinical psychologist. The rift had grown so wide,
for example, that Mary frequently criticized Roger for holding any staff meeting in which
feelings were talked about. Her view was that if one was conducting business, one was
not talking about people’s feelings (“We don’t do therapy with our staff”).

Roger asked me to engage in a piece of work that would result in a closer working
relationship between them. Meeting separately with Mary -- as Roger's resource -- I
realized that it would be extremely delicate (and yet quite important) to develop an initial
intervention that Mary would be comfortable with. I was particularly oriented toward
using language and design that was familiar to her and her orientation. My goal was to
undertake a kind of 'first step' that would generate some organizational data, open the
possibilities of a more thorough organizational diagnosis, and lay the groundwork for
future collaboration between them. In a sense this 'effort' would be a small test of the
future working viability between them.

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After a few meetings of the three of us, we settled on the idea of a stress workshop for the
staff, to give them the opportunity to share their concerns and experiences. This concept
seemed satisfactory on many fronts. It provided a 'familiar' event that Mary was
comfortable with and saw value in, it offered the possibility of generating organizational
data that both Roger and Mary could collectively address in their joint roles, and it could
function as a foundation step for the three of us to develop a more comprehensive
understanding of the organization as a whole.

What emerged from the workshop, however, was the staff’s strong feeling that the split
between Roger and Mary was the most significant source of stress in their work lives. It
was a result none of us anticipated. Mary felt quite exposed by the feedback and
essentially betrayed by me. She was very reluctant to consider working with me any
further. I felt extremely uncomfortable and guilty -- given all the careful planning -- and
began to wonder what I (with my clients) had done.

In processing this event, Roger and I gradually began to realize that the workshop
managed to expose the very 'presenting issue' that we had started with, and -- by
involving the staff in a formal process -- ended up acting out the very humiliation and
concern that Mary had about 'feelings'. In subsequent discussions, Roger expressed
ongoing feelings of helplessness, loss, and abandonment as a result of this event. We
began to explore how the three of us may have designed and undertaken an event -- in a
sense at Mary's expense -- in order to help Roger to continue to deny these feelings, to
use the staff to express them on his behalf, and to continue to put them into Mary.

This naturally led us to examine dynamics in the larger system itself. The day center was
geographically isolated from the residential treatment center, which, according to Roger,
was generally seen as the larger organization’s “home, where all the good things were
taking place. We were out there in no man’s land.” According to my client, the day
treatment staff felt chronically forgotten by the larger organization, in the person of the
assistant executive director, Paul, who was Roger’s immediate boss, and, like Roger, a
psychologist. Mary (the educational director) felt that other programs and people at the
residence were recognized and appreciated more than were her educational staff at the
center. Paul was not effective in advocating for the needs of the center to his superiors or
communicating to them the good things the center staff was doing. Mary in part held
Roger responsible for this. Additionally, Mary saw Paul and Roger as being in allegiance
with one another against her; she voiced a desire many times to be a part of their working
relationship.

In retrospect we saw how these hierarchical tensions exacerbated the difficulties between
Roger and Mary, although they were often framed as differences of professional
perspective between the two of them. There was a need for a superior to help them
integrate and mobilize their joint leadership roles, but Paul was not able to do it
effectively, despite some attempts. In the absence of effective representation and
advocacy by Paul, Roger felt helpless in being able to bridge the gap and convince the
senior 'powers that be' that the day center was as successful as it was.

9
In addition, unknown to me, Roger had been extremely concerned that the physical and
organizational distance increased the likelihood of rumors and distortions that would
cause them to form conclusions without verifying them directly. According to Roger:
“There was a tremendous amount of distortion that took place across the geographical
distance. There was rarely an attempt to bridge that gap.”

The experience of superiors being unable to adequately represent and advocate to the
hierarchy for the interests and needs of those they represented seemed to resonate
throughout the system. Disappointment, distortion, hurt, and feelings of being
misunderstood, undervalued, and ultimately abandoned prevailed.

We gradually began to realize the degree to which Roger had internalized these dynamics
in his role and used the workshop as an unconscious effort to displace them onto Mary.
The unbridgeable gap between Roger and Mary -- seen initially as a professional 'fight' --
was playing out larger geographical and hierarchical organizational issues.

Once our understanding had evolved, we jointly met with Mary. In processing this with
her, Roger acknowledged that the workshop had exposed Mary and that it had served the
function of distancing himself from his own feelings of failure and ineffectiveness in his
role. For her part, Mary began to realize the extent to which she had been dependent on
Roger to defend and protect her program, rather than to mobilize herself to take a more
effective leadership role in the larger system. I acknowledged to them both that I had
fallen out of role in colluding with Roger to use the workshop as a way of displacing
these feelings about himself; I was unable to 'hold' the entire system as a whole. The three
of us were gradually able to take up our work in developing a workable collegial
leadership model for the school.

Conclusion

I have written this paper from the perspective and experience of an organizational
development consultant who has had an analysis. The fact that I have chosen this
perspective is not surprising nor accidental, as my organizational training took place at
the same psychoanalytic institute with which my analyst is affiliated. In addition, the
initial stimulus for this paper was a continuing education course that I took at the same
Institute in 1998. Perhaps it is the 'consistency' in practice, perspective, and analysand
experience that inspired me to undertake this attempt at synthesis.

What predominantly drew me to this material was the opportunity to address a long-
standing fascination of mine: What is the 'appropriate' stance of a consultant who uses the
psychoanalytic perspective and how and in what ways is it similar to and different from
the stance of the analyst with the patient. My attempt is to use insights from
psychoanalysis to 'open up the frame' and at the same time 'inform' us on ways to think

10
about the role of consultant and the process of consultation. Exploring the theoretical and
case material for this paper has contributed to a growing model of practice for myself in
my consulting work.

I do not wish to suggest that going out of role is a desired state or propose that we
rationalize these mistakes by claiming, post facto, that it was an enactment (i.e. my
countertransference matrix made me do it!). We cannot rationalize and explain
everything a consultant does by citing inter-subjective relations. The key question for all
of us to ponder is: How can you determine when a mistake in practice is the opportunity
for learning and when is it (simply and sadly) an error? I believe that it is only in having
the courage to explore the 'mistake' with the client, to jointly acknowledge and take
responsibility for one's own role in enacting it, and to offer what understanding one can
muster of one's own motivation and feelings that a stronger basis for mutuality can
evolve and that the work can improve and deepen.

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