TY - JOUR A1 - Burston, Daniel T1 - Cyborgs, Zombies, and Planetary Death: Alienation in the 21st Century JF - The Humanistic Psychologist, Vol. 42 (No. 3, 2014), pp. 283-291, Y1 - 2014 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Daniel, Burston T1 - Remembering The Sane Society: An American Lament JF - Psychoanalytic Inquiry, Routledge, Vol. 44 (No. 1, 2024), pp. 116-123. N2 - Erich Fromm’s book >The Sane Society< was published in 1955, the second year of President’s Eisenhower’s administration, but had a profound impact on the ideas and agendas of social activists during the 60s and 70s, including this author. Its central theses were that the middle-class prosperity characteristic of that era masked a >pathology of normalcy,< and that capitalism transforms active citizens into passive consumers by compelling people to fill their material needs in ways that are at variance with their existential or human needs. The result is a dramatic diminution of their critical faculties, an atrophy of conscience, and the proliferation of a >marketing character,< a kind of alienated, hedonistic lifestyle whose emptiness is palliated by the consumption of ever larger quantities of consumer goods. Fromm’s analysis still rings true in some respects, but the middle-class prosperity and bland uniformity of opinion he critiqued began to wane in the late 1970s, gradually giving way to sharp extremes of poverty and wealth. The resulting political polarization has now reached a critical point, where the future of American democracy – or what little is left of it – is now in peril. So, as we approach 2025, Fromm’s analysis of America in the mid-20th century must be updated and modified to fit the contours of contemporary social realities. In so doing, however, we discover that American society is even more alienated, more atomized and fragile than it was in Fromm’s day. Y1 - 2024 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Burston, Daniel A1 - Mills, Jon T1 - Critical Theory and Psychoanalysis. From the Frankfurt School to Contemporary Critique, London and New York (Routledge) 2022 N2 - Critical Theory has traditionally been interested in engaging classical psychoanalysis rather than addressing postclassical thought. For the first time, this volume brings Critical Theory into proper dialogue with modern developments in the psychoanalytic movement and covers a broad range of topics in contemporary society that revisit the Frankfurt School and its contributions to psychoanalytic social critique. Theoretical, clinical, and applied investigations in social pathology are explored in relation to new directions in critical cultural discourse from a variety of psychoanalytic perspectives. In this volume, internationally acclaimed social political theorists, philosophers, psychoanalysts, cultural critics, and scholars of humanities examine contemporary issues in social critique that address a myriad of topics. Y1 - 2022 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Burston, Daniel T1 - Freud in America: The Golden Age, the Freud Wars, and Beyond JF - Psychoanalysis, Politics, and the Postmodern University (Series: Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice, Editor Stephen Eric Bronner), Cham, Switzerland (Springer Nature) 2020, pp. 19-44. N2 - In many ways, Freud was a typical child of the Enlightenment who equated scientific authority with rational authority per se. Since faith cannot be justified on purely rational grounds, Freud equated religious authority with irrational authority. But by contrast with his straightforward attitude toward science and religion, Freud’s attitude toward secular and govern mental authority was profoundly ambiguous. On the one hand, his theory of the cultural superego entailed a version of social contract theory, which legitimates governmental authority because it is based on reason, presumably, and because it is designed to avert chaos, or a return to >a state of nature.< On the other hand, Freud often wrote as if secular authority, like religious authority, really derives its underlying power from unconscious phantasies at work in the depths of the psyche, rather than from reason or necessity – as if the presence of rational authority in civil society was merely a mirage, or a cover, for more primitive and irrational processes that shape the interplay between leaders and their followers. He carried on in this fashion in Totem and Taboo (1913) and even more emphatically in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), where he described the dynamics of group cohesion in the Church and the Army as being remarkably similar. In both of these instances, he attributed the forces that promote group cohesion and the consent of the governed to sublimated homoerotic impulses, and the existence of a group transference of (mostly positive, idealizing) feelings toward the father onto the group leader, who functions as a kind of collective ego-ideal. [First section] Y1 - 2020 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Burston, Daniel T1 - Critical Theory, Left-Wing Authoritarianism, and Anti-Semitism JF - Critical Theory and Psychoanalysis. From the Frankfurt School to Contemporary Critique, London and New York (Routledge) 2022, pp. 158-184. Y1 - 2022 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Burston, Daniel T1 - Mapping the White Unconscious: Critical Race Theory, Whiteness Studies, and Psychoanalysis JF - Critical Theory and Psychoanalysis. From the Frankfurt School to Contemporary Critique, London and New York (Routledge) 2022, pp. 264-286. Y1 - 2022 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Burston, Daniel T1 - Recordando Psicoanálisis de la Sociedad Contemporánea: Un Lamento Americano. Traducción al español para la Sociedad Erich Fromm en Norteamérica EFSNA, 2025, 15 pp. JF - El libro de Erich Fromm, Psicoanálisis de la Sociedad Contemporánea, se publicó en 1955, el segundo año de la administración del presidente Eisenhower, pero tuvo un profundo impacto en las ideas y agendas de los activistas sociales durante los años 60 y 70, inclu-yendo a este autor. Sus tesis centrales eran que la prosperidad de la clase media caracte-rística de esa época enmascaraba una >patología de la normalidad< y que el capitalismo transforma a los ciudadanos activos en consumidores pasivos al obligar a las personas a satisfacer sus necesidades materiales de maneras que están en desacuerdo con sus nece-sidades existenciales o humanas. El resultado es una disminución dramática de sus facul-tades críticas, una atrofia de la conciencia y la proliferación de un clase media y la insulsa uniformidad de opiniones que criticaba empezaron a decaer a finales de los años setenta, dando paso gradualmente a extremos agudos de pobreza y riqueza. La polarización políti-ca resultante ha llegado a un punto crítico, en el que el futuro de la democracia estadou-nidense –o lo poco que queda de ella– está en peligro. Por lo tanto, a medida que nos acercamos al año 2025, el análisis de Fromm sobre los Estados Unidos de mediados del siglo XX debe actualizarse y modificarse para ajustarse a los contornos de las realidades sociales contemporáneas. Al hacerlo, sin embargo, descubrimos que la sociedad estadou-nidense está aún más alienada, atomizada y frágil que en la época de Fromm. Y1 - 2025 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Burston, Daniel T1 - Irrational Authority, Irrational Doubt and Contemporary Left-Wing Authoritarianism JF - J. Fantauzzi, M. Levitin, T. Maley (Eds.), Erich Fromm and Left Strategy . New Paths Toward Radical Transformation, New York (Palgrave Macmillan) 2025, pp. 125-140. Y1 - 2025 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Burston, Daniel T1 - Preface JF - Critical Theory and Psychoanalysis. From the Frankfurt School to Contemporary Critique, London and New York (Routledge) 2022, pp. xiii-xxiv. Y1 - 2022 ER -