In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

20 ARRAYS
gorized as pathological. In the Almanach fur das Jahr 1926, published
by the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, Otto Rank presents
materials from the talking cure of a deeply troubled young woman
(diagnosed as "hysterical"). The key passage in her wishful vision of the
future, which the analyst details for the almanac's readers, contains some
striking parallels to the fate of Dorothea Angermann and the Bavarian
waitresses in Philadelphia: "She begins her American life washing
dishes ... , but she ends up making a fortune and returns home crowned
with success. Although this advanced version of the family romance
stresses her identification with her successful father, she admits that in
her original fantasy she started as a waitress in a small and dirty roomand
then a wealthy American came: 'one of those who are already
wealthy and no longer have to make money,' like her father" (Almanach,
183). The only problem for the analyst is the overabundance of possible
interpretations for this Oedipal meta narrative, yet he never thinks to ask
why America of all places is the scene of wish-fulfillment in this family
romance, or why his patient's idealized father-equivalent has to be
American.
At the end of his travel narrative Rien que la terre, the French novelist
Paul Morand, a close friend of Ralph Barton, the New York designer
who failed to find consolation in Paris for his broken marriage, muses
on why Americans coming home to their country so enthusiastically
greet the Statue of Liberty, whereas French travelers return to their shores
weary and irritated: "Here, on this November evening, on this sad,
unheated ship, tired and shivering colonials, low-class prostitutes perfumed
with rotten luck, poorly paid and embittered functionaries, anxious
family men afraid of risks, people who have seen their fortunes cut
in half since they left France, opium smokers with bitter tongues-all are
returning silent, their backs turned ... Have we become the most acrid
sons of this European race, the race that tigers refuse to eat because of
its bitter flesh?" (Morand, 254-255). Might self-hatred be the reason
Europeans hate Americans-and long for America?
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