Professor Gareth Owen delivers inaugural lecture “Psychiatry and Human Nature: Classic and Romantic Perspectives”

12 December 2024

Professor Gareth Owen delivers inaugural lecture “Psychiatry and Human Nature: Classic and Romantic Perspectives”

On Tuesday 26 November, Professor Owen delivered his inaugural lecture as Professor of Psychological Medicine, Ethics and Law.

Professor Gareth Owen with Professor Sir Simon Wessely, Professor Matthew Hotopf, Professor Anthony David

L-R Professor Sir Simon Wessely, Professor Gareth Owen, Professor Matthew Hotopf, Professor Anthony David

The evening was opened by Professor Matthew Hotopf, Executive Dean of the IoPPN and Professor Sir Simon Wessely, Regius Professor of Psychiatry at the IoPPN.

Gareth Owen is a Professor of Psychological Medicine, Ethics and Law at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.

His research has focused on decision-making capacity and related areas, spanning theoretical to practical issues as well as policy impact. His book ‘Psychiatry and Human Nature: Classic and Romantic Perspectives’ is out with Cambridge University Press in April 2025.

As a consultant psychiatrist Gareth works in liaison psychiatry at King’s College Hospital. He is also a founding member and trustee of the Maudsley Philosophy Group Charity.

The vote of thanks was led by Professor Anthony David, Professor of Mental Health and Director of the UCL Institute of Mental Health.

I wanted to set psychiatry in a broad context relating it to questions about human nature and to demonstrate that it has long attracted interpretations from cool, detached perspectives valuing objectivity (classic) to hotter, embodied perspectives valuing subjectivity (romantic). In the lecture, I advocate for psychiatry to become more aware of classic and romantic threads which run through its make-up. Of course, the psychiatrist cannot entirely separate themselves from psychiatry and so, true to the inaugural lecture series, I give some autobiography too. It's a talk for anyone interested in the question of what psychiatry is, why this branch of medicine has ethical, political and legal significance and the relation that psychiatry has to human nature.
Professor Gareth Owen, King’s IoPPN