Editorial: European Contributors

The advent of the post-modern era revolutionized the approach to the psyche and marked the end to old securities based on the primacy of reason and science. When Jean-François Lyotard defines the post-modern as ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’, he implies that it is no longer possible for any one school of analysis, or any one discipline whether scientific or humanistic, to possess the truth about psychic reality ( The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge,  Manchester University Press, 1986, p.  xxiv). In the same way, if 19 ^th century science was above all characterized by the tendency to see ‘myth’, ‘literature’ and ‘science’ as hierarchical and mutually exclusive methods of representing reality, amongst which no dialogue was legitimate or even possible, post-modern science seeks to establish channels of communication with other channels, apparently alien discourses, that Michel Serres refers to whimsically as ‘The North-West Passage’ in order to construct some kind of synthesis, no matter how fragile and temporary. Jung himself was always extremely open to other, exotic or alien realities as we see from his fascination with Hermetic literature and from his dialogues with Pauli and with the many different specialists who came to the Eranos Conferences, and certain aspects of his thought are undoubtedly relevant in a post-modern context.

While the Journal of Analytical Psychology regularly receives European contributions, the November issue is dedicated to papers by authors living and working in Europe, whose works explores the European root of analytical psychology while also placing them in a wider context. This is a continuation of the policy of the Journal to promote scholarship and as lively and as diverse an academic dialogue as possible, which I think we can also interpret as a further step in the development of what we might call the ‘post-modern soul of analytical psychology’, that is, a tolerance towards other realities and a willingness to interac