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An audience of over 250 attended, and three presenters spoke.
Cláudio Laks Eizirik (Porto Alegre), President of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), and one of the leaders in the study of cultural factors influencing personality development, delivered a psychoanalytic perspective. He noted Freud's contributions to the understanding of the human mind and human behavior. Highlighting the internal conflict between love and aggression that may lead to expressions of hatred and violence, he especially noted early upbringing in the fostering of aggression or the capacity for love, the quality of the mother-child relationship and the presence of a father figure. The community's ability to hold and assist the family unit is crucial; a lack of social structures may lead to significant damage to the unit. In many severely traumatized individuals, unresolved mourning may lead to a deficit in the ability to symbolize. These unmetabolized, unsymbolized mental structures are then transmitted to future generations. These can be thought of as part of unconscious transgenerational transmission of hate, war and violence. Dr. Eizirik stressed the distinction between intergenerational and transgenerational transmission of psychic trauma. Intergenerational transmission is conscious and utilizes such processes as fantasy formation and identification. It is organized into a family narrative that is successively passed from one generation to the next. In contract, transgenerational transmission refers to unconscious mental content passed on that is dissociated, primitive and un-integrated. This kind of transmission is not symbolized in words or through stories.