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transl. by Ponsi): an associative way of thinking in the patient arises from the encounter with the analytic listening function and comes out form the formation of a common emotional field – in the analytic dyad as well in the analytic group. Paolo Fabozzi (2002), taking into account clinical situations in which patients are unable to freely associate, focuses on non-verbal modalities, that is on forms of communication that he calls ‘evocative’, which generate a potential space and transformative experiences. Claudio Neri (2002) described the characteristics of free associations in non-dyadic contexts, i.e. in small groups, where 'non-directed discussions' give rise to multiple associative chains. For Antonio Alberto Semi (2011), the method of free association should be distinguished from technique: the latter is a set of rules to be followed to accomplish a task, while the method stands at the heart of analytic thinking itself, including scientific inquiry. Being so essential to qualify the treatment as psychoanalytic that the fundamental rule must be stated explicitly and in detail in the arrangement established at the beginning of the analysis: "it is important that this contract be clear, explicit and detailed" (ibidem, p.70). Indeed, if it were not explicitly stated “the seductive component necessary and always included in the fundamental rule would become the prominent element, very close to an acting out” (ibidem, p.80). A group of five Italian authors reconstructed the historical, theoretical and clinical background of the concept and phenomenon of free associations: Maurizio Balsamo (2011), drawing mainly on Green’s and Laplanche’s thought, stresses the heterogeneity of free associations, which can also appear in non-verbal forms, albeit potentially transformable into them. The plurality of free associations – what he calls their ‘hetero-morphism’ - is related to the conceptual evolution from the first to the second Freud’s Topographies (from the Topographical to the Structural model), which includes heterogeneity of the material, plurality of linguistic games and the non-subjective field that lies outside the verbal; Aurora Gentile (2011) linking up with French psychoanalytic thought (R. Roussillon, R. Cahn), highlights ‘the materiality’ of the word, by the co-presence of representational and perceptive traces; Alessandro Garella (2011) highlights the opposition between the two contrasting ways of 'free associations' - as a concept or as a phenomenon: the latter has a direct experiential feedback in the context of the psychoanalytic clinical situation, while the concept refers to the abstract and general formulation of a clinical method, which, on the basis of the unknowability of the unconscious, identifies its derivatives in the 'official' discourse: the vantage point from which Francesco, Conrotto (2011), Alberto Luchetti and Francesco Napolitano (2011) develop their study of free associations is essentially philosophical – the former claiming that psychoanalysis, insofar as it posits itself as a gnoseology, becomes a ‘metaphilosophy’, and the latter analysing Freud’s method within an extensive essay on associationism from its origins in Greek philosophy. Maria Ponsi (2012), drawing on the conceptual framework of contemporary psychoanalysis, holds that, although the link with the original theoretical apparatus is loosened
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