is the title of a book by Philip Slater from the 60's. It lays out an account of the American psyche expressed in relatively simple terms drawn from psychoanalysis--which is not to say the account is wrong, but that there are other ways to say it.
The book's thesis has to do with the fantasy that many Americans share, a sort of pastoral Jeffersonianism, a community of sturdy, independent yeoman farmers, one I induge in myself & I think a certain wing of the counterculture of the 60's was a clear expression of it--going back to the land, doing your own thing, etc.
It is the ideal of individualism & total self-sufficiency, sometimes with modern technology, more often with "appropriate technology"--it has affinities with libertarian capitalism as well as with Jeffersonian pastoralism, and there is a definitely a certain animus against government and large institutions of any sort.
Slater says, in sum, that the overriding fear in American culture (and also British) is the fear of dependency.
Professor Bernstein below points out, rather distressingly, how this same strain in the American character finds expression in the "Tea Party" movement.
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