Nick Duffell - Wounded Leaders

BRITISH ELITISM

AND

THE ENTITLEMENT ILLUSION

A PSYCHOHISTORY BY

NICK DUFFELL

Contents

First published 2014 by Lone Arrow Press

Revised second edition 2015

Copyright 2014, 2015 Nick Duffell

All rights reserved

Nick Duffell has asserted his

right under the Copyright, Designs and

Patents Act 1988 to be identified

as the author of this work.

ISBN 978-1-84396-423-0

No part of this book may be reproduced

in any material or electronic form,

including photocopying, without written

permission from the publisher, except for

the quotation of brief passages in criticism.

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Wounded Leaders blog

and additional information:

www.woundedleaders.co.uk

Email woundedleaders@btinternet.com

Boarding School Survivors workshops:

www.boardingschoolsurvivors.co.uk

Email info@boardingschoolsurvivors.co.uk

Permission to quote from Iain McGilchrists

The Master and his Emissary: The Divided

Brain and the Making of the Western

World , New Haven & London:

Yale University Press (2010) is gratefully

acknowledged.

Excerpts from Recovering Sanity:

A Compassionate Approach to Understanding

the Treating Psychosis , 1990 by

Edward M. Podvoll, reprinted by arrangement

with The Permissions Company, Inc.,

on behalf of Shambhala Publications Inc., Boston, MA.

By the same author

THE MAKING OF THEM:

The British Attitude to Children

and the Boarding School System

Lone Arrow Press 2000 & 2010

ISBN 978-0-95379-040-1

If the Church of England is the Tory Party at prayer, the Public School system may be called the Tory Party in the nursery. Here are set out the traumas, deformations and truncations of character that explain the British Establishment from the appalling Doctor Arnold to the Thatcher Matronocracy. The British are known to be mad. In the maiming of their privileged young, they are criminally insane.

John le Carr author of The Perfect Spy , The Constant Gardener and The Night Manager .

A worthy and valuable aid in controlling the problem, not only by analysing its psychological components but also by pointing out ways to manage them, well-written, personally direct, and based on extensive study of the hundreds of boarding school survivors. I can highly recommend it.

The British Medical Journal

A clear-sighted, frightening book about what we might call the institutionalized child abandonment heartbreaking, thoughtful, lively and convincing.

Robert Bly, poet and author of Iron John .

A powerful book.

The Scientific and Medical Review

Elegantly reasoned and passionately argued, it will serve humanity by driving a well-placed nail into the coffin of the misguided mythology of British boarding school education.

Jean Liedloff, author of The Continuum Concept .

A tender and ruthless analysis of the effect of boarding school life on girls and boys, both at the time and later in life, will strike many painful chords and unlock many painful memories. On almost every page one encounters a sentence, a quotation or an incident that prompts a mental, Oh my God, yes!

Angela Lambert, author of A Rather English Marriage and Unquiet Souls .

Read a chapter online at

www.boardingschoolsurvivors.co.uk

About this book

A revealing, insightful, and provocative look at the backstory that shapes modern leaders, an important contribution to the growing movement to end what amounts to contemporary feudalism and replace it with a system future generations will want to inherit.

John Perkins , New York Times bestselling author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Many of our current leaders have been shaped by the public school ethos. Nick Duffell explains how such schools prize rationality and confident talk whilst they minimise emotions, and how people brought up like this can take us forward into a more collaborative world where politics is about discussion and consensus. A lucid and valuable contribution to understanding the culture we live in.

Sue Gerhardt , bestselling author of Why Love Matters .

Nick Duffell has exposed the underbelly of the British imperial psyche and its consequences for contemporary politics. Wounded Leaders unveils the problem and opens a way for cultural healing.

Dr. Alastair McIntosh , author of Soil and Soul .

In the spirit of The Emperors New Clothes, from a psychological and a behavioral neuroscience perspective, Nick Duffell provides a compelling argument that the process that produces the elite in British society are tantamount to child abuse. A wonderful book not only important, but beautifully written.

Professor Stephen Porges , University of North Carolina, author of The Polyvagal Theory .

A timely and important reminder of the need to change our minds in a fundamental way, and open ourselves to the powerful and practical wisdom of the heart. Its insights are profoundly needed everywhere, throughout the globe.

The Huffington Post

Well documented, erudite, suitably fervent in its denunciation of excruciatingly unjust, cruel and psychologically antediluvian institutions, this book is a must read for mental health practitioners and for those who want to gain a deeper insight into the workings of British society.

Self and Society

A long book taking a panoramic view of the subject and written in a very accessible style, signalling an area of huge importance, which had been almost entirely overlooked before. The relevance to thera- pists is profound: boarding survivors tend to hide their vulnerability behind a particularly impressive faade of apparent competence. Their privilege and ostensible confidence mean they have often been poorly served by therapy.

The Psychotherapist

About the author

Nick Duffell is the pioneer theorist on the psychotherapeutic understanding of residential education. Two television documentarieshave featured his work with Boarding School Survivors, and his book The Making of Them: the British Attitude to Children and the Boarding School System appeared in 2000 to wide acclaim.

Born in 1949, he has a degree in Sanskrit and has been a schoolteacher, carpenter, psychotherapist, management consultant and trainer. He writes frequently for psychological journals, contributed to the University of Surrey Human Potential Groups Dictionary of Personal Development and is committed to the development psychohistory as a tool for understanding current world problems. He is the father of two grown-up sons.

In 1996, he and his wife Helena Lvendal-Duffell founded the Centre for Gender Psychology, offering specialist training for professionals in the field of relationships, sex, and gender. Their 2002 book, Sex, Love and the Danger of Intimacy (HarperCollins Thorsons) has been translated into several languages and supports their training of CreativeCoupleWork therapists. They live between London and a remote corner of south-west France.