Florence 98: Destruction & Creation – Personal & Cultural Transformations (Proceedings of the 14th International Congress for Analytical Psychology, Florence 1998)

The 14th Congress for Analytical Psychology was held 23-28 August 1998 in the ancient city of Florence, Italy. The theme, ‘Destruction and Creation: Personal and Cultural Transformations’, is especially appropriate to the Italian setting, with that nation’s history of destruction, both from nature and from human activity, and its tradition – especially in Florence – of creative individuals and institutions. The theme is fitting, also, to the context of Jungian psychology, with its emphasis on these and other pairs of opposites, with their integral role in psychic wholeness. Acknowledging, also, that destruction is indispensable to creation, some Jungians prefer the term ‘creative unconscious’ to the traditional ‘collective unconscious’.