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Address by Zoom to the 15th International Sakharov Conference ‘Pulling back from the abyss’. Vilnius, Lithuania, 21-22 May 2025.
“Never forget that the causal link between holding power and aberrant behaviour is proven. Power is a heady drug, which not every leader has the necessary rooted character to counteract. To do so requires a combination of common sense, humour, decency, scepticism and even cynicism that treats power for what it …
In 2011 Lord Owen was instrumental in establishing a charitable trust, the Daedalus Trust (www.daedalustrust.com) with the aim of promoting research into personality changes associated with the exercise of power amongst leaders in all walks of life. The name for the Trust was chosen because of Daedalus’s combination of risk-taking tempered by wisdom.
The Trust increased awareness of this important leadership and governance issue and supported research that
From ‘Psychological Medicine’, September 2023.
Jean-Paul Selten, School for Mental Health and Neuroscience, University of Maastricht, Maastricht, the Netherlands
“Although certain contemporaneous leaders show signs of hubris and pose a great danger, the hubris syndrome does not yet figure in our classification systems. The purpose of this paper is to examine several aspects of its validity, including clinical description, laboratory study, and exclusion of other disorders.
“…there is sufficient reason …
Lord Owen discusses breaking away from Labour—having become their Foreign Secretary aged just 38—with the ‘Gang of Four’ to form the SDP. He reviews this defining moment in UK political history; the SDP’s legacy; which PMs suffer ‘hubris syndrome’; the economy; the NHS; and much more.
View a video of the podcast here…
The dictator’s untrammelled influence has given him delusions of righteousness, Our democratic world must challenge him or be crushed.
Lord Owen and Professor Ian Roberston write in UK’s Sunday Times, Sunday 27 February 2022
Read the full article here
“….power is as potent a brain-changer as any drug and Putin is in a dangerous mental state because of this. His religiosity and sense of spiritual mission, combined with his blunted …
Lord Owen, speaking at ‘Crisis: Malvern Festival of Ideas’ in March 2019, discusses current affairs from the perspective of “the leadership we’ve had over the last few decades”. 49’02: video
Speech by The Rt Hon Lord Owen to the Society of British Neurological Surgeons spring meeting, Torquay, Friday 13 April 2018: The Geoffrey Jefferson Lecture – Neuroscience and Psychology of Hubris Syndrome.
Full text here: Torquay speech
PowerPoint slides here: Torquayslide
View the full video here (you’ll need to register then sign in although there is no charge): https://sbns.talkingslideshd.com/view?presentation=5596
“…(Recent research is indicating) a stress model for hubris syndrome. …A …