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The Eighth International Congress of the International Association for Analytical Psychology took place in San Francisco in the faded splendour of the Sheraton Hotel. The themes of the congress were analytical training, and, in keeping with its venue, depth dimensions of physical existence, food, drink, fashion and money. The congress was well attended with members from three continents. Most striking was the large number of younger members present, with some of the newer members giving papers for the first time at the International Conference.
The width of the themes naturally enough produced a large number of papers, and it was difficult to encompass all the themes. Each participant was faced with a choice; ten main morning papers, each with an introductory speech and a response, papers in their own right, while in the afternoons there were a total of forty shorter papers. Such rich fare with so little space between the papers and little public discussion made the content rather indigestible. However, private individual discussions continued and ranged widely outside the conference halls, in small groups, tête-à-tête, at lunch parties, dinner parties, bus rides and even hot tubs.
There were varying responses to the papers and on balance the writer would have liked to hear some of the shorter afternoon papers expanded with more time given for discussion since their very succinctness made a tantalising forum for further talk, and often these papers overran the carefully timed programme. Possibly in a dialectic movement with the last conference in Rome, the papers were on the whole not clinical. With the lack of clinical material there was room for wider issues of depth psychology to emerge. The themes embraced movements in social and cultural groups and changes in perception of the attitudes to personal relationships, to men and women in society and the relation of psyche and soul in analytical psychology. Over-valuing the positive aspects of the trickster may underes