Freedman presents an overview of the relevant historical and social factors, and describes the emotional setting, of the 1985 Hamburg Congress, the first international psychoanalytic meeting to be held on German soil since 1932. The official theme of the Congress was "Identification and Its Vicissitudes," but the more compelling sub-theme was the impact of Nazism on the psychoanalytic movement. This paper also introduces the other papers in this issue, which were presented in May 1986 at the Edmundd Weil Memorial Meeting on "Psychoanalysis and Values: Reflections on the Hamburg Congress," at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.