Editorial

The Journal's tenth international conference was held in St. Petersburg May 12^th - 15^th 2011 and in this edition we are publishing the papers from the five plenary presentations plus the first of several papers from the breakout sessions.

One of the reasons for holding the conference in St. Petersburg was the recognition of the growing importance of analytical psychology in Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia where the ten year IAAP programme of training analysts made possible by the Russian Revival Fund is now coming to an end with a thriving community of Russian analysts taking up the training of future Russian analysts themselves. Therefore holding a conference in Russia at this particular transitional moment seemed particularly auspicious.

The experience of supervising and analysing in Russia also contributed to the theme of the conference, ‘The Ancestors in Personal, Professional and Social History’, since working in Russia has made many of us painfully aware of its traumatic history and how that continues to cast a long shadow over the lives of analysts and patients alike. Quite separately, the 50^th anniversary of Jung's death provided another link to the theme of ancestry. In the event, these two separate themes intertwined in remarkable ways as we all came to a deeper understanding of what it means to be rooted (or not) in one's ancestry and how, for all of us, the past is a legacy with which we need to come to terms as a vital part of our own individuation.

The nascent Russian analytic community welcomed us to St. Petersburg with great enthusiasm: in addition to their invaluable collaboration with the organization of the conference, four Russian analysts took part in one of the plenary presentations and two presented papers in the breakout sessions. Over 50 Russians attended the conference, together with participants from many other former ‘Eastern bloc’ countries such as Belarus, Poland, Slovenia, Ukraine and the Czech Republic. Together with participants