Aggression: Summary and Overview

Abstract

This symposium on fighting and defeat produced a rich variety of new data and new ideas. It rapidly became apparent that the general purpose of the symposium of bringing together current work in the biochemical and neurophysiological correlates of agonistic behavior in mammals was much too ambitious. Such a goal could not have been reached in a single day or probably in a single week. There are too many species of mammals and too many varieties of agonistic behavior to review. However, the symposium was immensely stimulating, and was very valuable for its participants. Everyone was brought into confrontation with our exciting but completely inadequate knowledge of aggression not just in our laboratory animals but, more importantly, in man. The roles of species uniqueness, of seemingly insignificant environmental factors, and of neural circuitry produced many questions, but few final answers. These issues and others were debated energetically during the symposium and in a special discussion group the following morning.