The idea to devote a special issue on the Assessment of Emotional Functioning and Emotional Competence arose during the preparation of the 10th European Conference on Psychological Assessment that took place from the 16th until 19th September 2009 in Ghent. The conference theme was "The assessment of emotions and emotional competencies". Emotions have become a cross-cutting theme of research across theoretical and applied domains in psychology. The academic interest is especially voiced by scientific journals focusing on emotion, such as 'Motivation and Emotion', 'Cognition and Emotion', and more recently 'Emotion'. Moreover, there has been a long-standing interest in emotions in the applied domains, especially in clinical psychology.