Erik Monasterio Psychotherapy, Leadership, Critical Decision-making and Age

Section Night Talk November 6th 2025 - A review by John Roper-Lindsay

This presentation had the snappy opening title of “Psychotherapy, leadership, critical decision-making and ageing”. And Erik’s talk, as a Forensic Psychiatrist with 27 years' experience, was a very interesting analysis of athletes who take on high-risk activities, along with some fascinating anecdotes of high-risk events, with quite a few coming from his own experience as a high-end mountaineer and adventurer.

Erik introduced two very different examples of behaviour. The first was during the 1950’s when nationalism was a big factor in mountaineering, and the American team including Charley Houston, after weeks battling bad weather, was close to the summit of K2, but abandoned the attempt to attempt to save the life of another teammate Art Gilkie who became very sick. The team lowered Art ropelentgh by ropelength, for a full day, but Art pleaded with them to leave him as it was a near suicidal mission. Overnight, Art disappeared, and they believe he deliberately cut the ropes to save the others. The second example illustrated the flip side of mountaineering, about an Argentinian “guide” that Erik knew from when Erik was guiding in Bolivia. This guide had lied about his achievements, including climbing Everest, but managed to persuade a 69-year-old wealthy Bolivian Nils Atezana to hire him for an attempt on Everest. They reached the summit, but Nils became very ill, and Gustavo carried on down, not raising the alarm for two more days, by which time no rescue was possible.

Erik then introduced his research project which was to analyze what makes high-risk takers, such as mountaineers and base jumpers, different from other people. He talked mainly on Temperament and Character. For temperament, High-risk takers such as Mountaineers and Base jumpers scored very similarly to Psychopathic murderers. And Erik can relate to the novelty seeking, risk-taking side of things, as it has been a big part of his life. In 1992 he embarked on a solo 1200 km trek through the Bolivian jungle with very little experience. By the end he was skeletally thin. But he, and others like him, need really intense experiences to feel fulfilled, and less intense experiences are not rewarding.

However, at the Character level, extreme athletes and psychopaths are very different, with the extreme athletes being very organised. One surprising result is that the athletes are very low in Self-Transcendence, or spirituality, having high self-transcendence is a propensity to be idealistic, creative and altruistic, and these people can lose themselves in a moment. This means these people are not that driven to achieve mountaineering goals.

Erik showed a number of stunning photos from the traverse of Illimani near La Paz, despite suffering very severely with altitude sickness, and the magic of visiting incredible places and sharing these experiences with friends.

Putting it together, mountaineers and base jumpers are very organised, co-operative, goal-focused. Erik’s theory is that, in situations where decisions have to be made very quickly, the low self-transcendence they also exhibit will bias mountaineers to make decisions that can be inhumane and prevent them from helping others. And to take it further, Western society does not encourage self-transcendence.

As these athletes get older, and have to slow down, it is important that they explore other aspects of life and to adapt.

This summary is a very curtailed one, and you might find some of the following links useful: -

Charles Houston, and the K2 rescue attempt

NZAC Journal article on Erik’s traverse of Illimani

Stuff article 2018 on Erik’s research into Extreme Athletes