The Glory and Shadow of Fame

The impact of fame on a person, as well as on others, is a very timely topic deserving of our attention. Around last Fathers’ Day, one of Saul Bellow’s sons wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times titled “Missing: My Father,” about his longing for the father he never had rather than the one he lost from recent death. Later that evening, a special television program on Hollywood fathers and sons aired, highlighting the perks and hardships of growing up with a

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celebrity parent. The same week there were two articles in the New York Times about Michael Jackson’s acquittal from child abuse charges. One argued that the judgment had nothing to do with his fame and the other that it had everything to do with it.

Although I haven’t written about the children of famous parents in many years, my interest in the topic has never waned. The “Featured Scholar” and “Featured Author” interviews of two accomplished individuals—Sue Erikson Bloland and Thomas A. Kohut—the children of famous psychoanalysts appearing in Clio’s Psyche, provide some interesting data for a discussion of the subject. My article is based upon my years of interviewing and analyzing children who have grown up with famous parents, my contacts with spouses of someone famous, biographies and autobiographies of the famous and their offspring, and my study of creative individuals and the creative process.

Does the study of well-known psychoanalysts differ from other spheres of fame? I am sure the readers instantly noticed the disparate nature of the two interviews. Sue Erikson Bloland evidently feels very comfortable speaking about her famous father and the effects of being his child—something she says took her years of analysis to accomplish. Thomas Kohut, on the other hand, appears averse to answering questions about his father and seems only to want to speak of his career achievements and to have them appraised on their own merit. Although he acknowledges that his father was very influential to his development, he is reluctant to elaborate. These are two very typical responses in children who grow up with a famous parent. There are others. Some remain connected to the famous parent, often pursuing a career in the same field, or choosing a mate that resembles the parent in age, career, or both. Others attempt to conceal their connection to the parent, sometimes purposely changing their name for fear of receiving special treatment (either positive or negative) that is unrelated to who they are. In all cases, there is a powerful, ambivalent bond to be dealt with.

After reading the excellent biographies of Erik Erikson by Lawrence Friedman (Identity’s Architect: A Biography of Erik H. Erikson [NY: Scribner Friedman, 1999]) and Heinz Kohut by Charles Strozier (Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst [NY: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2001]), and the lovely memoir by Sue Erikson Bloland (In the Shadow of Fame [NY: Viking, 2005]), it is possible to speculate that the reactions of Bloland and Kohut could be explained as having little to do with their parents’ fame. Although Erikson was a renowned child analyst, he was not a hands-on father. Child rearing was left completely to his wife, Joan. Sue felt her father’s absence and his preoccupation with his work above all else. She was also sent to a boarding school at a young age at a time when she had no desire to leave her home and school. Sue confesses that she harbored a secret longing to become a patient in order to receive the attention she imagined her father’s patients received. Becoming a psychoanalyst in her own right, as well as her writing and speaking about her father, his fame, and fame in general, can be interpreted, at least on some level, as a way she has found to maintain a strong connection to the remote father of her childhood.

Heinz Kohut, on the other hand, seemed to have been intensely involved in his son Thomas’s life. For example, he read everything he wrote to his son (except his autobiographical “Two Analyses of Mr. Z”). Thomas, an only child like his father, was so close to his father that he was entrusted with the task of burning all of his father’s process notes on patients upon his death and of arranging his father’s memorial service exactly as he wished it to be. This involvement appeared to be geared to satisfy the father more than the son. In Strozier’s biography of Kohut, he mentions several occasions during which Thomas complained of his father’s inordinate need for attention in social situations, a behavior that embarrassed and angered him. Should it come as a surprise, then, that Thomas, in his adult life, seeks to distance himself from a father whose needs of him were so great?

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The different reactions in Bloland and Kohut, one could easily argue, have more to do with parenting style than fame. I bring them forward to highlight the many variables involved in parenting that get wrongly attributed to the fame factor. When approaching the famous, or those involved with them, let us try not to get caught up in the whirlwind of celebrity mystique and fervently attribute everything to it. Indeed, both Erikson-Bloland and Kohut, as well as Helene Rank, daughter of Otto Rank (whom I interviewed on August 31, 1987), all emphasize that their relationships with their mothers were as influential as the ones they had with their famous fathers.

Bloland’s evocative memoir and discussion of fame raises several points that I would like to address. Although her book is subtitled, A Memoir of the Daughter of Erik H. Erikson, the book is a family portrait that focuses primarily on fame and its underbelly. She writes beautifully about the discrepancy between the public and private father she grew up with and her difficulties reconciling the two. The focus in her book is more on fame than on the children of fame and she emphasizes the idolization of famous persons as a detrimental factor in those who seek fame as well as those who are indirectly affected by it.

Although some people do seek fame for fame’s sake, I am not convinced that this was the case with either Erikson or Kohut, or many other creative persons who end up famous. Research has found that the only factor creative people have in common is their unrelenting drive to do what they do, even in the absence of external reinforcement or recognition (Arnold Rothstein, Creativity and Madness. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). Therefore, to reduce these person’s needs to narcissistic ones is too simplistic in my view. Many creative thinkers, like Erikson and Kohut, have no idea that they will become famous, but they are intent in putting their ideas across to the world. Erikson, and especially Kohut, experienced strong opposition to their views that ran counter to mainstream psychoanalysis, and they paid the price of alienating prior mentors, like Anna Freud, in pursuit of their visions. I agree with Bloland that having a grandiose vision is, in part, narcissistic; yet, being able to withstand the injury related to the rupture of significant relationships in the course of pursuing one’s vision comes at the expense of narcissistic gratification. Rather than viewing creative persons as pursuing fame as a way to meet their narcissistic needs, the more relevant question might be how these people handle fame once they attain it.

We live in a culture of celebrity, it is true, and there are many negative consequences that result from it. Sue Erikson Bloland delineates these beautifully. What is important to add to her account in order to balance the picture is the natural need people have for heroes and idols, stars and the famous. Kohut’s theories of the self nicely illustrate the human need for idealization that famous people, as well as parents, can serve. Otto Rank (The Myth of the Birth of the Hero [NY: Knopf, 1932]) and Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death [NY: Free Press, 1973]) similarly wrote about the human need for heroes, explaining that the world is too terrible without them. This is not a pathological need but a very human one. As is the envy experienced toward those who succeed and the need to debunk them, an aspect Bloland does not devote enough attention to in her book. Melanie Klein’s theory is useful here. Group formation and the choice of leaders, as Freud (Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego [Standard Edition, 18: 67-143]) noticed in 1921 and Bion (Experiences in Groups [New York: Basic Books]) in 1959, also consist in the gratification of such needs. Indeed, since Biblical times, the need for idolization was recognized. After Moses failed to appear on Mount Sinai on the appointed day, his people felt their god had abandoned them and instinctively created a golden calf to idolize. Therefore, as Kohut suggests, we should not be too quick to dismantle people’s needs to idealize.

Bloland’s writing seems to imply that the famous are essentially narcissistic characters in need of a reader/audience’s adulation in order to function and feel sure of themselves and their self-worth. While this may be true for some, I believe that a degree of narcissism and grandiosity are necessarily part of being creative. The creative individual, like the child at play, invents new worlds (Danielle Knafo, “Revisiting Ernst Kris’ Concept ‘Regression in the Service of the Ego.’” Psychoanalytic Psychology. [2002] 19 (1): 24-49). How can one accomplish such a feat without feeling grandiose and believing that one can contribute

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substantially to the world? Furthermore, the emotional and time investment in one’s creativity necessarily involves a certain degree of self-involvement, which often comes at the expense of social and family engagement. Once again, Kohut helps us to distinguish healthy (creative) narcissism, that includes ideals and grandiosity, from the unhealthy narcissism Bloland speaks of, whose aim is to compensate for damage, depression, trauma, and loss.

It is not easy being famous. Can anyone truly survive the scrutiny of public life and emerge unblemished? The biographies of these two men, and those of others who live in the limelight, imply that they were great thinkers but far from great men due to their personal flaws. Erikson, “architect of identity,” had his own identity problems because of his unknown paternity, rejection of his Jewish heritage, and his need to hide his Down Syndrome child. Kohut, creator of self psychology, was ambivalent about his sexuality, denied his Jewish roots, and was himself a narcissist. These revelations do not make these men less great in my view because their ability to take individual psychopathology and transform it into theories that have universal applicability and appeal is the essence of greatness and creativity, not fame.

Having said that, I wish also to stress that it is not easy growing up with a famous parent or an extremely creative one, or even a workaholic parent. Interestingly, the theories of both Kohut and Erikson help us understand some of the challenges such children face in their development. A child who grows up knowing he or she does not come first in the parent’s preoccupations develops narcissistic wounds and feelings of neglect and abandonment, as in Bellow’s “missing father.” The daughter of a very famous actor/director whom I interviewed poignantly described her father’s abandonment and lack of involvement in her life: “I always felt when I went to see him—the few times that I did—that it was as though I were being granted an audience and I was just another member of the public who was coming to see the public man. And I never really knew the private man…That’s one of the hardest things for me to deal with emotionally…When I was a young person, it was very traumatic and very painful…I experienced it as rejection and…I simply couldn’t understand…how a parent could be that indifferent to a child. It was very painful and also, I felt that if he had not been a public figure, then this would’ve been my private dilemma. But because he was a public figure, I was constantly reminded of what I experienced as this rejection. Because people would say to me, “Oh, what is he doing there? Is he…?” And I wouldn’t know. And I would find it as a child very humiliating that I couldn’t tell them more than they could read in the papers because he wasn’t in touch with me. I took it very personally (Danielle Knafo, “What’s in a name? Psychoanalytic Considerations on Children of Famous Parents,” Psychoanalytic Psychology, [1991] 8(3), p. 273).

Many feel unloved or, even worse, attended to merely as “the son of” or “the daughter of”—narcissistic extensions of their famous parent—rather than for who they really are. Bloland says in her interview, “The more excited people are to meet ‘Erik Erikson’s daughter,’ the less I feel I exist for them as a person. It is actually humiliating to be so objectified.” In addition, essential mirroring and caretaking of the child are often reversed in these families so that it is the child who is called on to mirror the parent and his or her accomplishments rather than the other way around. This may have been the case with Kohut. Erikson Bloland, too, admits that she provided “emotional caretaking” for her father, a tendency she later developed in her career as a psychoanalytic social worker.

In addition to issues concerning the development of a healthy narcissism and sense of self are issues of identity formation and consolidation in the offspring of the famous. Erikson contributed a lot to our understanding of identity. Growing up in the shadow of a celebrity parent often results in difficulties individuating and establishing an identity separate from the parent. Martin Freud, Sigmund’s son, resignedly confesses his plight: “I have never had any ambition to rise to eminence….I have been quite happy and content to bask in reflected glory…. The son of a genius remains the son of a genius, and his chances of winning human approval of anything he may do hardly exist if he attempts to make any claim to fame detached from that of his father (Sigmund Freud: Man and Father [New York: Jason Aronson, 1983, p. 9]).

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Identity problems derive in part from the strong ambivalence felt toward the famous parent. They also result from the ways others treat the child, often encouraging in them the sense that they are imposters who receive favors having nothing to do with who they are. Even Anna Freud, after establishing her own fame, interpreted a dream she once had as “The people are nice to me, because of him, his name (In Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Anna Freud. [New York: Summit, 1988], p. 344).” Thus, identifications in the offspring of the famous are often mixed. On the one hand, they may perceive themselves as special and privileged, even entitled—”basking in reflected glory”—and, on the other hand, insecure, inadequate, and confused about who they are, destined to—living “in the shadow of fame.”

One also encounters magical identifications in these children because many of them never witness the parent’s climb to fame. As a result, they believe that they can be the parent without having to become the parent, thereby confusing imitation with true identification (Reich, 1973). Charlie Chaplin Jr. illustrates this point in a conversation he reports having with his brother, Syd, “‘I’m going to be an actor when I grow up,’ Syd said. I understood what he meant. He was going to take that whole fairy tale world for himself one day, so he wouldn’t have to wait to be invited to it. I thought over the idea a minute. It looked good. ‘Me too,’ I agreed…I am going to be a great actor,’ I told them solemnly…. I was thinking about a man who was the greatest comedian in the world. I was his son with his name so I had to be good’” (Charlie Chaplin, Jr. My Father, Charlie Chaplin. [New York: Popular Library, 1960]).

What exactly is in a name? When they marry, female offspring of famous fathers have the choice of changing their family name. This choice is often fraught with conflict. Wishing, on the one hand, to be free of the pressures built around one’s identity and tie to the famous father, they nonetheless desire to maintain whatever bond they can to the elusive parent and even benefit from the doors it might open. Helene Rank and Sue Erikson Bloland, both women who became psychoanalysts in their own right, long deliberated about when, how much, and to whom to use their father’s name to get ahead in the profession. Moving out of a famous parent’s shadow is clearly accomplished with much pain and hard work aimed at coming to terms with the reality of their childhoods—what they did and did not get—and their adulthoods—who they are and who they are not.

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