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The Italian Institute for Interpersonal and Group Psychoanalysis (SPIGA) organized and hosted the Second International Conference of the International Karen Horney Society (IKHS) at the Universita degli studi di Roma “La Sapienza” during the early part of May 1994. It was a most productive exchange of ideas with psychoanalytic clinicians from several countries. Most important was the product of the Conference, which has an invaluable cultural perspective, the Italian outlook obviously enriched by some of the most recent epistemological debates taking place in Europe. This issue of the Journal is a collection of the papers presented in the Conference and it roughly follows the order of the presentations in Rome.

The early part of the Conference, entitled “Theory: Meetings over the Texts,” included an Introduction to Horney by Bernard J. Paris, the author of the most recent biography of Horney and a Horneyan theorist of fast widening international reputation. Paris is the founder and the force behind the IKHS. This section also included summary presentations about the major Horneyan works by Paris, Nathan M. Horwitz, Jack Danielian, as well as Marcia Westkott and myself. The works are well known to the Journal's reader. Also, Giusseppe Miccolis presented his very original paper on “Sociocultural Influences in Horney's Theory.” Miccolis's work gives us a rare contextual look at some of the main cultural influences in the development of Horney. Such influences, clearly presented from a firsthand experience of the northern European culture, include artists such as expressionist pioneer Edward Munch and, of course, Henrik Ibsen.

The second part of the Conference, “Clinical Applications: Diadic and Group Contexts,” included presentations about different clinical topics. Vincent Morrone's paper on “Project, Process, and Change” points to the unique teleological aspect of Horney's theory, an innovation from previous psychoanalytic thinking. Morrone, who trained in New York, di