The Canadian-American academic Daniel Burston's latest book is an erudite Weberian analysis of authority in its various modes - secular, religious, scientific - as well as in its manifestations - rational, irrational and anonymous. In its 184 pages, figures such as Freud, Lacan, Althusser and Nietzsche are exposed to charges of authoritarianism. It will be no surprise to the well-versed readers of this journal for Freud or Lacan to be on the carpet, though Nietzsche may come as something of a shock to those who idolize him.

Burston's book is dedicated to the brilliant historian of psychoanalysis, Paul Roazen, who made startling revelations about that discipline, as well as its founder and eminence grise, in volume after volume in the 1970s and 80s - two of which I reviewed for The Economist. Roazen's intellect and scholarship distinguished him from publicity-seekers like Jeffrey Masson, who