Wounded Leaders by Nick Duffell - Interview & Book Giveaway

I would like to introduce you to Nick Duffell   psychotherapist and author of “Wounded Leaders - British Elitism and the Entitlement Illusion”.

In this controversial essay – brimming with politics, history, psychopathlogy, neuroscience, anecdotes, passion and humour – Nick Duffell, psychotherapist, psychohistorian and author of the acclaimed The Making of Them, argues that the British national obsession with sending the children of the well-heeled away to school has a major impact on our society, our institutions and our attitudes

If you've ever wondered why generations of privileged and 'well educated' politicians have failed to deliver us into utopia, Nick Duffell may just have an explanation.

Nick is giving three of my readers a chance to win a signed copy of his latest book.  I met up with Nick  and asked him a few questions about "Wounded Leaders".  
 

Giveaway Open Worldwide 

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1. What inspired you to write this book? 



The 2010 UK election. I just couldn't bear our appetite for such wounded leaders. Britain voted back into power dysfunctional ‘boarding school survivors’, whose psychology I had been studying for 25 years and described in detail in The Making of Them in 2000. I had to write about the political implications of the privileged abandonment of the children of the elite. But also Breaking Bad – I wanted to write a book that zoomed in on a subject from all kinds of different angles and perspectives and told a good story!

2. Are the experiences based on someone you know or events in your own life? 

I have seen the negative traits of being institutionalized in childhood – especially on marriages - in myself, in many friends, in hundreds of clients, and via thousands of letters from the general public responding to my work.


3. What books have most influenced your life most? 

Mostly American: Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion, Robert Prisig’s Lila and Moby Dick. Then there’s William Wharton and Anne Tyler, but I can’t leave out the novels of Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence.


4. If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?

Brilliant question! Robert Prisig – a master of the art of good storytelling while unfolding a serious commentary on life. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was seminal but he perfected it 25 years later with Lila. So far – he’s 86 – he’s only written two books.

5. If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book?

Yes, I’d try to make less typos and not fill it with so many ideas.

6. Do you have any advice for other writers? 

All I can speak about is non-fiction. Make it personal enough to have authority and passion but not so personal it becomes confessional … and don’t include your own poetry!


7. What were the challenges (research, literary, psychological, and logistical) in bringing ‘Wounded Leaders’ to life? 


Plenty: to show the entitled confidence of the Establishment is a compensation for loss, built on fragility; to explain the subtlety of the personality ‘born to run’ that ex-boarders inevitably develop, regardless of ‘damage’; to invite people to think about the limits of rationality through this specific lens and take the argument much wider; to make the recent important findings of neuroscience easily understandable to the general reader.


Thank you so much Nick it was a pleasure to meet you again. Good Luck everyone

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