Introduction

The publication of some of the key plenary South African papers in this Special Edition of the Journal of Analytical Psychology is a great privilege and opportunity.

For first time in the 52-year history of the IAAP its three-yearly Congress was held in the southern hemisphere and that it should have been at the southern tip of the African continent is remarkable.

How did this come about? We have to go back 10 years, to Florence in 1998, when Verena Kast's administration put forward an amendment to the Constitution of the IAAP which was then voted on by the delegates. This important change enabled smaller societies to be represented on the Executive Committee, thereby bringing more movement and new blood into the organization.

Throughitthe Southern African AssociationofJungian Analysts (SAAJA) was able to serve on the Executive Committee. It was during my two terms in this capacity that I realized that the developing parts of the world, and particularly South Africa, had much to share with and, yes, even to give to Europe and the USA. Of course analytical psychology has its origins in the northern parts of our globe where its long history and lineage reside, but, as with all things old, renewal is also necessary.

South Africa has had a painful history; it continues to grapple with its past in an alive, open and not always easy manner. As a collective it strives towards embracing the fact that in essence we all share a common humanity— it is this that I wanted to bring to the IAAP membership through hosting the Congress in Cape Town. And it was more than a hosting—it was meant to be an encounter: an encounter with nature, animals, and people with different worldviews and ways of life, but people who are generous and willing to give of themselves—I knew that we as South Africans could do this in a unique way. In the beginning this process was not easy: many hurdles had to be overcome. There was much anxiety—would this Congress bankrupt the IAAP, because it would be an org