The roots of IAJS are deeply connected with the history of Jungian studies as an academic discipline. Particularly, the organization came into being largely from the groundwork of Professor Renos Papadopoulos and Professor Andrew Samuels that, starting in the mid-1990s, a growing community of scholars began to gather to encourage and promote the interrelationships between the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP) and the academic community at large.
Renos Papadopoulos suggested the creation of an organization that could coordinate Jungian-themed conferences and promotes a space from which both analysts and scholars alike could exchange ideas. In 2002 the idea to establish an association to promote the congress of both IAAP members and academics who are interested in Jungian psychology became a reality. Thanks to the dedication of the members of the Steering Group that was formed to initiate the activities of IAJS, a first Executive Committee (2003-06) was elected to lay down the virtual community of Jungian scholars that was to evolve into the current membership, which counts over 300 members from 21 countries.
The fostering of the relations between analytic and academic communities is strongly endorsed by the constitution of the association, which reflects pluralistic values in promoting scholarly work that ranges from the arts and the humanities, religious studies, social sciences, psychology, philosophy, medicine, science, and clinical and theoretical methodologies and research..
The Board of Directors wishes the IAJS to continue to promote such an essential opportunity for two worlds, the academic and the analytic, to meet and creatively sustain the scholarly work of those with an interest in analytical psychology.