:54:01
to be a safe part
of his surroundings.
:54:04
His taste wasn't terrible.
:54:06
He was a man who preferred
watching baseball...
:54:09
to reading "Moby Dick"...
:54:11
and that got him off
on the wrong foot...
:54:15
or so the legend goes.
:54:17
It was much more
a matter of symbolism.
:54:19
To the Marxists
he was one thing.
:54:22
The Catholic Church
never forgave him...
:54:25
for the Vatican incident.
:54:26
The American people...
:54:28
in the throes of the Depression
as they were...
:54:31
found in him a symbol
of possibility...
:54:34
of self-improvement
and self-fulfillment.
:54:37
And of course,
the Freudians had a ball.
:54:40
They could interpret him
in any way they pleased.
:54:43
It was all symbolism...
:54:45
but no two intellectuals
agreed about what it meant.
:54:49
I don't know if you can call it
a triumph of psychotherapy.
:54:52
It's more like a triumph
of aesthetic instincts.
:54:55
Dr. Fletcher's techniques
didn't owe anything...
:54:57
to then-current schools
of therapy...
:55:00
but she sensed what was needed
and provided it.
:55:03
That was, in its way...
:55:05
a remarkable
creative accomplishment.
:55:07
When I think about it,
it seems to me his story...
:55:10
reflected a lot of the
Jewish experience in America--
:55:13
the great urge to push in
and to find one's place...
:55:18
and then to assimilate
into the culture.
:55:21
He wanted to assimilate
like crazy.
:55:31
Eudora Fletcher's
life has also changed...
:55:35
from this experience.
:55:36
For her, fame and recognition
are empty rewards...
:55:39
and do not live up
to the adolescent fantasies...
:55:43
that prompted her ambition.
:55:45
She and her patient
have fallen in love...
:55:48
and it is no surprise
when she forsakes...
:55:51
the upwardly-mobile
attorney Koslow...
:55:53
and announces wedding plans
with Zelig.