In the Shadow of Fame

Author Sue Erikson Bloland
Narrator Celeste Lawson
Publisher Blackstone Publishing
Run Time 6 hours and 8 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Biography: general, Biography: philosophy and social sciences, Gender studies: women and girls, Memoirs, Psychoanalytical and Freudian psychology, Psychology, Sociology and anthropology.

Get in the xigxag app

This book is not purchasable in your country. Please select another book.

Pre-order Buy Now £{{ price }}

How does xigxag pricing work?

Listen to a sample

What to expect

Written by the daughter of world-renowned psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, this is the intimate story of a daughter’s struggle to develop a sense of self in a family—and a world—in which being famous is the very definition of being a worthwhile human being.

Sue Erikson Bloland struggled from an early age to reconcile the public view of her father as a pioneering intellectual and quintessential father figure with the complex and insecure man she knew in private. Overwhelmed and eclipsed by her father’s fame, she spent years searching for meaning and direction in her own life; yet 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 shares her personal insights into the costs and rewards of celebrity. Her story, though unique in its personal details, describes a struggle faced by all of us in the modern, fame-obsessed world.

Critics Review

“Sue Erikson Bloland writes with keen insight and wonderful rich detail…I wish I had read this book as a teenager; she could have saved me a dozen years of therapy.”
Roseanne Cash, daughter of Johnny Cash
“Anyone interested in the problems of fame will find Bloland’s memoir useful.”
Publishers Weekly
“Celeste Lawson provides a warm representation of Bloland’s view of childhood.”
AudioFile
“Bloland’s emotionally stinging, intellectually acute recollections are sure to attract a large audience.”
Booklist
“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 and visiting professor, history of science, Harvard University
“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, PhD, 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 and Hobbs Professor of Education and Cognition, Harvard Graduate School of Education

More from the same

Narrator

Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to get tailored content recommendations, product updates and info on new releases. Your data is your own: we commit to protect your data and respect your privacy.