“Building on the rich history of psychoanalysis, Burston invites his readers to explore the meaning of a truth-loving disposition and its relevance for contemporary debates in the social sciences and humanities. This important book shines a critical lens on currently fashionable critiques of academia and demonstrates the relevance and depth of humanistic thinking for the pressing psychological and political issues we face today.”

—Roger Frie, Professor of Education, Simon Fraser University and Affiliate Professor of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Canada

“Daniel Burston is one of those rare intellectually gifted polymaths whose scholarly contributions to psychoanalysis, political critical theory, and the history of the social sciences remain unparalleled. In this recent book he perspicaciously critiques the politics of psychoanalysis, authoritarianism, the pre-linguistic unconscious, the anti-psychiatry and pharmacology movements, the ideology of group identification, post-enlightenment sensibility, and the crisis of postmodernism in the humanities. Before we slip into fascism and irrevocable ecological destruction, his timely call for critical self-reflection and conscientious social activism is incumbent upon us all.”

—Jon Mills, Faculty, Postgraduate Programs in Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy, Adelphi University, USA and author of Inventing God (2016).

“A truly educative volume that is destined to be widely read. Is there another author who could do justice to such disparate—but equally controversial—figures as Paul Roazen and Jordan Peterson? This is the backdrop to Daniel Burston’s disconcerting mirror for psychology and psychoanalysis, situated between academia and the wider culture. Far from being personalistic or journalistic, this work rests on Burston's masterly knowledge of critical theory in its widest sense.”

—Andrew Samuels, Former Professorof Analytical Psychology, University of Essex, UK