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achieve, in order to accept the commitment of trying to comply with free association. According to Freud, this fundamental rule consists of the patients having “to refrain from any conscious reflection and to abandon themselves, in a state of quiet concentration, to following the ideas that occurred to them spontaneously (involuntarily) […] even if they are disagreeable, too senseless, too unimportant or irrelevant” (Freud, 1924, p. 195). Many other analysts have explored and developed their thinking about the “analytic attitude”, following Winnicott’s concept of holding and the facilitating environment, (Winnicott, 1965, Klauber, 1981, Bollas, 1987, Parsons, 2014), in which the analyst offers him/herself as an object to be used by the patient. This has expanded the field of understanding of the analytic process, including the transference and countertransference and the analyst’s affective response (King, 1978). J. Sandler (1976) described the concept of the analyst’s role responsiveness, which concerns the analyst’s capacity to unconsciously identify with an internal object belonging to the patient and to engage in an enactment in the session. The analyst only subsequently becomes conscious of what has taken place and is then able to formulate an interpretation concerning the fantasy meaning of what has occurred. This type of enactment may involve the analyst’s body, in terms of behaviour or a particular bodily response. Within Italian psychoanalysis, (e.g. Bolognini, Bonaminio, Chianese, Civitarese, Ferro) following the work of Winnicott and Bion, there has been a development of thinking concerning various elements of the analyst’s analytic attitude, expanding the understanding of the concepts of countertransference and construction, and focusing on the “person of the analyst”, including the analyst’s body. Bolognini has explored the subject of psychoanalytic empathy (2004) which he locates in moments of deep emotional contact and insight between analyst and patient in the session: “a felicitous combination of emotion, imagination and reflection, which had enabled both the patient and myself to fully comprehend what was happening.” (2004, p. 13). Antonino Ferro’s description of the quadrants of the setting has contributed to expanding the concept of the setting (1998). These are four main definitions of the setting that, while emphasizing different prevailing meanings, combine to constitute the setting as a whole. The first quadrant is the set of formal rules (couch, frequency, fees, and so on). The second includes the analyst’s mental condition, which, according to Ferro, varies depending on the patient’s projective identifications and is a key condition for the evolution of the analysis. The third quadrant refers to the setting as a goal and views the analysand’s breaking of the setting as an attempt at communication, especially in the case of more seriously ill patients. Here Ferro is stressing a different perspective from the traditional one; he considers that transgressing the rules may constitute a mode of communication rather than a manifestation of acting out. (Limentani, 1966, has also stressed this point of understanding acting-out as a communication) Finally, the last quadrant includes the disruption of the setting by the analyst, based on José Bleger’s ideas.
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