About the Author - Sue Erikson Bloland

Photo by Leon Forrest

Sue Erikson Bloland is a psychotherapist in private practice and a member of the faculty of the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis in New York City. She received her M.S.W. from New York University and her analytic training at the Manhattan Institute.

The daughter of the celebrated psychoanalyst and author, Erik H. Erikson, Ms. Bloland has made a life-long study of the nature of fame: the psychological origins of the drive to be famous, the universal human need to idealize the famous, and the negative impact of fame on the potential for genuine human intimacy. She lectures and writes on this subject, bringing both her personal and her professional experience to bear on the exploration of the interpersonal dynamics of celebrity. Her psychosocial perspective is further enriched by her graduate work in social anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and in sociology at the New School for Social Research.

Articles by Ms. Bloland have recently been published in The Atlantic Monthly (“Fame: The Power and Cost of a Fantasy,” November, 1999), and Psychoanalytic Dialogues (“Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy: The Dark Side of Charisma,” March/April, 2000). Her memoir In the Shadow of Fame was published by Viking Penguin in February 2005 and is now available in paperback.