Editorial

In this edition of the Journal, we are pleased to offer you a selection of articles from two conferences held in Europe in 2018, as well as two articles having to do with topics of current interest, one concerning the conflict between the legal world and the analytical world, and the other on the differentiation of healthy and unhealthy forms of dissociation, and this in reference to the challenges refugees face in adapting to their new life circumstances.

The first five papers were presented at the IV European Conference of Analytical Psychology, which was hosted and organized by the Société Française de Psychologie Analytique and held in Avignon at the sumptuous Palais des Papes. The presentations focused on various aspects of the overarching theme of the conference, ‘Bridging the familiar and the unfamiliar in the Europe of today: cultural, clinical and theoretical perspectives’.

In keeping with this theme, in her paper entitled, ‘Models for training in Developing Groups: importing the traditional into unfamiliar cultures’, Jan Wiener addresses the challenging issue of exporting analytic training programmes to countries with very different social, political and clinical attitudes. Beginning with an overview of the changes in the training programme over time of her own society, Jan explores some of the challenges faced in working with professionals from different cultures training to become Jungian analysts within the IAAP Router Programme. The author is particularly well suited to address this thorny topic because of her extensive experience of working in many different countries in Eastern Europe, including Russia, Poland, Romania and Serbia. The encounter with ‘otherness’ in this context has led the author to examine and question the assumptions underlying the analytic attitude. This paper reveals the influence of culture in our understanding of analytic concepts and lays the groundwork for further discussion, exploration and questioning of what we mean when we t