Family Therapy Academy Presents
WAR AND FORCED MIGRATIONS.
LOSSES AND FAMILY TRANSFORMATIONS
64TH CONFERENCE – JULY 4TH AND 5TH 2025
SERAPHICUM AUDITORIUM, Rome
Objectives
The recent Assisi conference followed by the Assisi Manifesto and the international resonance in the scientific world have underlined that the mission of family psychotherapists is not limited to clinical work in the therapy room, but includes a social and community dimension in the healing process.
On these premises, it was born the need to organize a study congress on the theme both dramatic and current of entire families and populations such as the Palestinians and the Ukrainians, forced to face the devastation and the losses in the hands of inhuman wars and the consequences of massive forced migrations.
Wars, forced migrations and natural calamities afflict the planet in the 21st century due to growing sovereigntist ideologies and oppressions linked to race, gender, and religion. These are dramatic challenges that involve the whole world and require brave choices and denunciation and social commitment.
This meeting is a special occasion to listen to the courageous testimonies of psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers who work in the trances in different parts of the world with families and communities devastated by wars.
Through the images and the words of our speakers, we will hears stories of family resilience in enduring the most dramatic events of human existence and we will understand at the same time the fundamental need to be recognized and respected in their values and in their human dignity.
The documentary/film “Wrong side of the bus” represents the thread of this convention. It tells the story of a South African professor of psychiatry who emigrated to Australia, returns to Cape Town determined to resolve his sense of guilt and shame for having colluded with apartheid for forty years and for being ashamed to “sit with the blacks on the wrong side of the bus”.
The purpose of this conference is to help us reflecting now on how it is easy to remain silent, to accept social injustice and racism, and to come to terms with our own conscience so as not to run the risk of ‘sitting on the wrong side of the bus”.