18. Sigmund Freud came to despise the United States
Sigmund Freud admired the United States as a young boy, when he kept a copy of the Declaration of Independence in his room. During his lifetime he made just one journey to America, in 1909. He was invited to lecture at Clark University; one of his audience was William James, one of America’s greatest philosophers and a pioneering psychologist. James found Freud to be closed-minded, fixated on his own ideas and unwilling to consider the relative merit of others. On his part, Freud found America to be “a mistake. A gigantic mistake it is true, but nonetheless a mistake”. He returned to Europe nurturing grudges against the Americans.
One of them was based on American informality. He was outraged that Americans to whom he had just been introduced would address him by name, rather than his title of Doctor Freud. He found America to be absurdly prudish, interested in his theories solely for their sexual revelations. And he believed that America’s wealth and consumption were signs of nationally repressed desires which in themselves were unhealthy and dangerous. Freud was even angered by the treatment he received when invited to a barbecue, complaining his food had been cooked on an open fire as if by barbarians.