Sue Erikson Bloland - Publications

BOOKS & ARTICLES

In the Shadow of Fame

As the daughter of the renowned psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson, Sue Erikson Bloland struggled from an early age to reconcile the public view of her father as a pioneering intellectual – and, for many, a quintessential father figure – with the complex and rather insecure man whom she knew in private.

In her beautifully written and moving memoir, Bloland recounts her father’s rise to celebrity and the eagerness with which her parents embraced fame. Feeling overwhelmed and eclipsed by her father’s acclaim, she spent many years searching for meaning and direction in her own life.

She watched her father relate comfortably to strangers in ways that he was unable to with his own family. And like the children of many celebrities, she felt compelled to uphold her father’s public image despite her awareness of his human vulnerabilities.

In a portrait enriched by her own psychoanalytic training, Bloland describes her family both before and after the advent of her father’s fame, sharing her personal insights into the costs as well as the rewards of celebrity.

Additional Publications

• “Fame, Narcissism and the Capacity for Intimacy: A Daughter’s Reflection,” Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 34(5): 486-497, July 2014.

• “Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy: The Dark Side of Charisma.” Psychoanalytic Dialogues,10(2): 285-289, March/April, 2000

• “Fame: The Power and Cost of a Fantasy.” The Atlantic Monthly, 284(5): 51-62, November, 1999

• Co-Author, Carnegie Commission on Higher Education Research Report, American Learned Societies in Transition (McGraw-Hill, 1974)

"Sue Erikson Bloland writes with keen wisdom, and wonderful, rich detail, about her famous father, her highly accomplished mother, her family secrets, and her struggle to find her essential self in the proximity and psychic heat of their fame. Her comment in the introduction about the search for a 'meaningful non-heroic way to be' had me in tears. She defined my own personal quest in that one sentence. I wish I had read this book when I was a teenager; she could have saved me about a dozen years of therapy. Her exploration of the disconnect between the public persona and the private parent has the resonance of Truth, told in the intimate tone of a close friend. I really treasure this book; it is a document that at many instances became a mirror for me."

- Rosanne Cash

"This is a remarkable, deeply captivating exercise in self-reflection and self-understanding. Sue Bloland excavates the complex, layered dynamics of the family that her prominent parents forged. She arrives at unprecedented depth and remarkable insights."

- Lawrence J. Friedman

Author of Identity's Architect: A Biography of Erik H. Erikson, Visiting Professor, History of Science, Harvard University

"Sue Erikson Bloland's memoir is, at once, a heart-rending account of family tragedy in the context of driven aspirations and profound achievement, and an illumination of fame as a powerful dynamic process. She transforms pain-filled experience into personal, and now shared, truth."

- M. Gerard Fromm, Ph.D., ABPP

Evelyn Stefansson Nef Director, Erikson Institute for Education and Research, Austen Riggs Center

"Drawing on often painful experiences as the child of celebrated parents, Sue Erikson Bloland illuminates how fame affects the dazzled public, those closest to the celebrity, and the celebrity himself."

- Howard Gardner

Author of Changing Minds, Hobbs Professor of Education and Cognition, Harvard Graduate School of Education

"Bloland’s emotionally stinging, intellectually acute recollections are sure to attract a large audience."

- American Library Association

BOOKLIST, December 1, 2004

A "... probing memoir... Anyone interested in the problems of fame will find Bloland's memoir useful. "

- Publishers Weekly

January 31, 2005

"...Bloland's hard-won insights about fame are astute, and her analysis of its workings is unusually thoughtful."

- Los Angeles Times

February 19, 2005