From Tradition to Innovation: Jungian Analysts Working in Different Cultural Settings

This compilation of sixteen chapters gives a fascinating account of the wide variety of experiences of Jungian analysts working in different cultures across the world - for example in Russia, China, Poland, Lithuania, South Africa and Mexico. The contributors describe and reflect on their experiences both of offering and receiving training within these cross-cultural professional partnerships. The book shows the expansion of distance learning models in analytical psychology, in particular in so-called "shuttle" programs which have been developed by analysts travelling widely over the past 20 years under the auspices of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP). The authors give detailed accounts from both sides of the mutual encounters and challenges between different cultures, often coloured by recent history including social trauma. This is a book not only about training but is also an enlightening cultural commentary for our times.

The powerful bi-directionality of cultural influence and discovery is apparent in different ways in every chapter. By locating new training programs not in long-established institutions but within developing groups in other cultures, traditional models of training have been challenged by different therapeutic environments. Often this has led to imaginative, innovative ways of learning - as vividly detailed in the chapters. It also prompts a necessary re-appraisal of which concepts feel to be essential to the core values of our Jungian practice and which show an outdated adherence to culture-bound attitudes.

The publication of this book is a timely reminder that when psychoanalysis and Jungian analysis as we know it is floundering in some Western countries, new projects in countries seeking to develop an analytic culture give hope for sustaining our professional practice. This book contains the voices of both seasoned and recently qualified analysts; well-known and new authors. The contributors come from nine countries including Russia, Poland, Israel, the UK, the USA, Lithuania, Germany, Switzerland and Italy.