Rigidity and Power: Neuroplasticity, Leadership, and the Conditions for Effective Diplomacy

​Moderator: Peter Corbett, LICSW   

​Panelists: Dr. David Erritzoe, Rick Doblin, Dr., Ann DeSollar, and featuring Carlos Ruiz-Hernandez, former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of Panama (2024-2024) and Ambassador to the United Nations (2010-2014) 

​We are living in a moment of intensifying international tension—political, cultural, and psychological. Across nations and institutions, positions are hardening, polarization is accelerating, and leadership responses increasingly appear driven by threat and reactivity rather than dialogue or synthesis.

​This raises a central question for our time:
What happens when leaders and systems lose the capacity to metabolize difference?

​By “metabolize,” we mean the ability to take in opposing perspectives, historical wounds, and competing values—and transform them into something more integrated rather than more rigid. When this capacity breaks down, difference becomes threat, power becomes defensive, and rigidity replaces creativity. Unprocessed trauma—whether personal, institutional, or collective—often expresses itself as domination, escalation, or the imposition of certainty under pressure.

​This conversation brings together clinicians and leaders in psychedelic medicine with Carlos Ruiz-Hernandez, former Panamanian Ambassador to the United States, to examine the psychological and nervous-system conditions required for effective diplomacy. From the perspective of high-stakes international negotiation, diplomacy depends not only on strategy and interests, but on regulation, trust, and the capacity to remain open in the presence of profound difference.

​Neuroplastogenic medicines, when used responsibly, offer a compelling counterpoint to rigidity. By restoring neuroplasticity, they appear to increase tolerance for complexity, reduce fear-based reactivity, and expand dialogic capacity. Clinically, this is seen in the treatment of PTSD and entrenched conflict patterns; more broadly, it raises important questions about leadership and decision-making under pressure.

​In an era of mounting global tension, this panel explores a timely and urgent proposition: that the future of diplomacy may depend as much on psychological and neurobiological capacity as on policy—and that rigidity, when left unexamined, becomes one of the greatest risks to effective leadership in a complex world.