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This book is the record of the first international conference convened for the purpose of studying the processes and dynamics of international conferences; in fact, an international conference on international conferences. The goals of such conferences and the motivation of the participants may be complex. Many of us may have thought it a simple matter—a social get-together, or a way of finding out whether it is worth taking Dr. X's papers seriously in the future after having seen him in the flesh and met him in a bar. This attitude may still be justified in the case of some medical conferences, but not of conferences in general. It appears that political and diplomatic conferences are bedevilled by disruptive tensions, more or less unconscious, much the same as those we meet in professional and therapeutic groups. This book uncovers a lot of these, particularly in relation to cross-cultural factors which obstruct communication. It is thus a significant book about a most important subject.
The title introduces the familiar theme “Communication or Conflict”. Why is it that in the process of trying to communicate with our fellows we so frequently fail? The idea that we too often make statements at people rather than get across our ideas and feelings is a thoroughly familiar one to analysts who spend much of their time trying to find out what has happened to their interpretations.
So with this conference, the participants are concerned with trying to distinguish between talking and saying something, between noise and what can reluctantly but usefully be called mutually adaptive feed-back transactions. The conference was convened by the World Federation for Mental Health and the Macy Foundation, and met in Eastbourne in 1957. The international participants included many well-known figures, medical, social, and educational, some with long experience of international conferences. Many fundamental questions about the purposes and dynamics of conferences were asked; some were