A NOTED Canadian child psychologist, Richard Tremblay, spoke recently at Brown University about the developmental course of aggressive behavior from early childhood onward. His lecture was co-sponsored by Rhode Island Kids Count, this region's preeminent child-advocacy organization. Professor Tremblay's research suggests strongly that aggressive, violent behavior is part of the human fabric. Tremblay's conclusion is that aggression is not learned. Rather, it comes with the animal turf we share.

Supporting the assertion that aggressive behavior is built in to humans genetically is that it is found in very young children, in all cultures, and most strikingly in males. We come equipped with it as part of our behavioral repertoire as a gift of our survival as a species, and the socialization of children is largely a matter of bringing our aggressive dispositions under control. To put it bluntly but correctly, we learn not to be aggressive and violent the same way we learn not to soil ourselves or wet our bed -- through social pressure not to behave that way. Without such training and discipline, we would grow up cosmetically wanting, and unhealthy. We can't be toilet-trained without behavior control.

Tremblay's findings have significance beyond the scope of his studies. There is a lesson here for the pathway to peace. Given today's advances in warfare technology, we probably can't survive as a species without some global innovations that will stifle aggressive, predatory behavior, the modern equivalents of which are territorial and economic acquisitiveness. Yet behavior control is viewed with great suspicion. Despite its universality, and its constant presence in our lives, the concept of behavior control is, for many, as frightening as warfare. Because of that fear, we hesitate to capitalize on the knowledge and expertise already available, and that which is yet to be learned.

How we resolve issues surrounding behavior control will determine, as much as the science of nuclear energy, whether humans will survive and escalate warfare to another level -- or not. It is not the human capacity to create nuclear fission that is in and of itself frightening. It is how humans behave with that capability that will be required to negotiate constructive, peaceful plans for the future of humanity.

Behavior control is a fact of life. Raising infants and young children involves behavior control in the service of social education, and few of us deny that we are shaped or controlled by our environments in different ways in different cultures, and especially by our families. We count on behavior control to enhance well-being in every aspect of our lives, as in traffic and pedestrian control. Rules are not inherently objectionable -- once we've been socialized.

Most of us have an understanding of the fearsome reality of behavior control when it involves clear and reprehensible victimization of individuals by others. On the recent five-year anniversary of 9/11 terror acts, we tried to recapture our sense, collectively and individually, of what happened that day. It was a transformative time in human history. The words used by many who experienced the blasts directly were "I felt powerless, helpless," suggesting they lost all sense of control by designated authorities and themselves.

In a sad but significant sense, the control accomplished by the terrorists was successful, in that many survivors today suffer from mental and behavioral conditions dubbed clinically as post-traumatic stress syndrome, anxiety disorders, depression, and chronic fatigue.

The phenomenon is real. Circumstances can take charge of an individual's life and lifelong reminiscences, and lasting trauma can be "planted." Perhaps for that reason, we have difficulty accepting behavior control in other contexts as a reasonable, proper, moral requirement for human social development.

We must face the reality and the irony that our aggressive and acquisitive tendencies have brought the human species to a point where we now have the scientific capacity to destroy everybody -- including ourselves. While warfare, like children's aggression, has existed since the beginning of humankind, it has until this century been sufficiently limited in scope that there would always be surviving victors. Now, however, weapons of mass destruction are equal-opportunity residues of our intelligence and inter-cultural aggression. Nations will have to take a lesson from Tremblay's research, and realize that aggressive potential is here to stay, and only learning processes and socialization on a grand scale will ensure human survival.

The same intelligence that brought us here must now be used to reverse aggressive assaults and promote opportunities for collaborative peace-making.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, responsible for the massive scientific effort known as the Manhattan Project, which created the atomic bomb and thus ended World War II, knew that there are other scientific breakthroughs required to secure lasting peace.

In a 1945 speech, FDR (who died before he could deliver the piece) wrote: "Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships -- the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together, in the same world, at peace."

FDR's emphasis on science suggests that had he lived there might have been another Manhattan Project, addressing human relationships and the learning processes required to control international aggression. We have the choice to use, or not use, behavior science benevolently.

The choice is distinctively human. No other species has this capacity.

In FDR's terms, a science of human relationships must be appropriated, and must prevail.

Such an effort is now required, even more than in FDR's time, to study how to abort and abate the violent behavior so prevalent in the modern world. Today, only a full-throttle commitment and large-scale investment in the study of the behavior of aggression will provide a level playing field for the terrorized people of the world.

Lewis P. Lipsitt is a professor emeritus of psychology, medical science, and human development at Brown University. He is chairman of the board of RI Kids Count.