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The European Psychoanalytical Federation (EPF) is very grateful to the colleagues of the Polish Psychoanalytical Society for giving the opportunity to conduct the 31st EPF Conference in Warsaw 2018. Warsaw, with its changeful and tragic, as well as heroic, history is a most appropriate place for a cooperative exchange about the conference theme “The Origin of Life.” In the last century, Warsaw and its inhabitants suffered so many painful deaths but they were also able to survive the terrible destruction executed by the German Nazi war criminals. Warsaw had to also overcome a long period of repression by the communist system. We remember and honour the heroic resistance of the Polish Jews and all Polish citizens who fought against the Nazi barbarism and thus finally gave space for the predominance of life over death, even though very many people lost their lives. The defeat and capitulation of the German army had been a starting point for new hope and new life in Europe, even if there followed other political vicissitudes and difficulties in Poland which persist until today. The analytical traveller who arrives in Warsaw from abroad and visits the scars and resurrection of the city’s architecture, can also dare to sense the fight between life and death in the impressive Rising Museum and in the Jewish Museum. He/she will be deeply touched by a vast amount of emotions, oscillating between horror, fear of death, admiration of bravery, and relief by new hope. The traveller may be reminded of Freud’s (1915) statement:
We recall the old saying: Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want to preserve peace, arm for war. It would be in keeping with the times to alter it: Si vis vitam, para mortem. If you want to endure life, prepare yourself for death. (SE, 14, p. 300)
But the traveller may also remember another remark in which Freud (1930) declares:
And now it is to be expected that the other of the two ‘Heavenly Powers’ [p. 133], eternal Eros, will make an effort to assert hims