The Hamburg Congress was a significant event in the history of the psychoanalytic movement. It was the first international meeting on German soil since the 1932 Wiesbaden meeting. We were in contact with German analysts engaged in the considerable efforts of remembering and critically examining the past, and we were confronted with the residuals and derivatives of Holocaust mentation. In most general terms, the Congress raised sobering issues about the values underlying our discipline and the vulnerability to erosion of such values.

At the conclusion of a memorable meeting on the “History of the Psychoanalytic Movement in Germany,” which took, place on Tuesday afternoon, Otto Kernberg reminded the audience that there was not only a generation gap or a culture gap, but also a cross-Atlantic gap—namely, that many of our American colleagues had stayed away. We who were there, he noted, had an obligation, upon our return home, to tell those who were not there about the Congress. The purpose of this special issue, then, is to fulfill that recommendation.