Uncle Sam on the couch

According to George Walden, the United States is a country with a psychosis, which the dictionary defines as a serious mental disorder characterised by, for example, delusions and a lack of insight into his condition on the part of the patient. No wonder that even sympathetic foreigners, says Walden, understand less than ever what makes America tick. This book is his attempt to enlighten them.

‘How can America’s intellectual and technological sophistication be reconciled with primitive attitudes on gun law and capital punishment?’ asks Walden. ‘How can its creed of self-seeking be combined with its religiosity? And how can its culture be at once infantile and highly mature?’ Why, in particular, is American society ‘manically sexualised’? Easy, he says: it is all the fault of the Puritans. Putting America on the couch, he examines its contradictions, hypocrisies and neuroses, in everything from sex and crime to business and foreign policy. All, he declares, can be explained by the enduring influence of this bunch of early English immigrants.

Part essay, part rant, often perceptive, sometimes wildly wide of the mark, his analysis contains lots of good stuff and is mostly rather enjoyable. The ‘mental isolation’ of America, the narcissism of its incumbent president, the paradox of a country that is curious about everything except abroad: these are among the many topics elegantly picked over. His carefree approach to the central proposition (never mind the spelling, punctuation or footnotes) allows a few side-swipes at non-Americans, too: Russia is crippled by ‘chronic immobilism’, Britain is ‘an ex-world power, on whose willingness to make international judgments the sun never sets’, and so on. And on the Puritans, those ‘utopian pessimists’, Walden is subtle and interesting. On the ubiquity of their influence, though, he is unconvincing.