Word: gorer
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Americans, according to Gorer, are psychologically unable to endure the open dislike of the people around them. One example he gives is the difficulty experienced in carrying out a tough policy in conquered Germany. In such situations Americans tend to withdraw, physically if possible; if that is not possible, then chemically, through alcohol, or ideologically, into isolation...
...fear is to anticipate it, by rejecting before one is rejected." The other side of the fear of being rejected is "the fear of being exploited, of being made a sucker of, of not being truly loved for oneself alone but only for what one provides." This, says Author Gorer, is the meanest and one of the most prevalent of American fears. The generosity of Americans, great and ungrudging as it is, is likewise limited by the suspicion that they may be exploited...
...Author Gorer's chapters range through opinions on children ("the concept of being a sissy is a key concept for the understanding of American character"); jobs ("the typical patterns of the relationship between American employers and employees can be viewed as stemming from a shared abhorrence of the idea of one man being in overt authority over an equal"); plumbing ("the symbolic and patriotic value of these adjuncts to sanitary and comfortable living has become so great that Americans in foreign countries tend to esteem these alien societies in direct proportion to the number and availability of these amenities...
...must be repeated that the goal of 'dating' is not in the first place sexual satisfaction. An 'easy lay' is not a good 'date,' and conversely. . . ." For many girls, says Gorer, the "dating" period is one of humiliation, of frustration, of failure. But such unsuccessful girls are often married earlier and better than the "belles" who find it difficult to give up such triumphs...
Courteous & Clinical. Anthropologist Gorer has spent seven years in the U.S. with British wartime missions and on the staffs of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Yale Institute of Human Relations. In comparison with the old tobacco-spitting attacks of the great English travelers -Dickens, Trollope, Captain Basil Hall -The American People is refined and respectful. Yet its cool and clinical air reveals at times an underlying dislike which may be more destructive than the old quarrel between eagle-screaming Americans, whooping that they could lick the world, and haughty British remittance men sneering at them for spitting on the floors...