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Brain Advance Access originally published online on February 12, 2009
Brain 2009 132(5):1396-1406; doi:10.1093/brain/awp008
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© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Hubris syndrome: An acquired personality disorder? A study of US Presidents and UK Prime Ministers over the last 100 years

David Owen1 and Jonathan Davidson2

1 House of Lords, London, UK 2 Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, USA

Correspondence to: Lord David Owen, House of Lords, SW1A 0PW London, UK E-mail: lordowen@gotadsl.co.uk

Received September 29, 2008. Revised December 10, 2008. Accepted January 5, 2009.

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

‘The history of madness is the history of power. Because it imagines power, madness is both impotence and omnipotence. It requires power to control it. Threatening the normal structures of authority, insanity is engaged in an endless dialogue—a monomaniacal monologue sometimes—about power’.

Roy Porter

A Social History of Madness: Stories of the Insane, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987 p. 39


   Introduction
 
Charisma, charm, the ability to inspire, persuasiveness, breadth of vision, willingness to take risks, grandiose aspirations and bold self-confidence—these qualities are often associated with successful leadership. Yet there is another side to this profile, for these very same qualities can be marked by impetuosity, a refusal to listen to or take advice and a particular form of incompetence when impulsivity, recklessness and frequent inattention to detail predominate. This can result in disastrous leadership and cause damage on a large scale. The attendant loss of capacity to make rational decisions is . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   Hubris syndrome and its characteristics
 

   Establishing the diagnostic features of hubris syndrome
 

   Proposed clinical features
 

   Heads of Government in the US and UK over the last 100 years
 

   Relationship between hubris syndrome and narcissistic personality disorder
 

   Neurobiology of hubris syndrome
 

   Comorbidity and classification
 

   Is hubris syndrome treatable?
 

   Caveats and limitations
 

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