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When rooted in the present and the factual, the re-enactment compulsion strives to eliminate the past and thought. However, when this disappears through the decathexis of temporality and psychic conflicts it restores a sense of continuity. The analyst-object, a present-day witness of this disobjectalizing and desubjectivizing archaic defense, can help the passivity/activity reversal to assume a meaning and the identical to yield to the similar. The protective quality of the re-enactment compulsion occurs in the clinical treatment of Steve, as well as in children suffering from archaic anxieties.