Abstract
An important empirical basis for the interpretations of Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson and R. Nevitt Sanford in The Authoritarian Personality (TAP) were questionnaires and in-depth interviews conducted by William R. Morrow with prisoners at California’s San Quentin prison. A reconstruction of the historical approach exposes serious methodological shortcomings, some of which Morrow openly addressed in memoranda, revealing that the supposedly particularly authoritarian attitude of the prisoners was due, among other things, to their submission to the psychiatric authority in the authoritarian situation of the prison and due to the conditions of a hierarchical prisoner society. In TAP, the empirically inadequate survey was interpreted primarily in the context of psychoanalytic literature on crime at that time, in particular Robert Lindner’s Rebel Without A Cause, whose theory of pseudo rebellion permeated TAP. Focusing on the shortcomings of TAP, this article argues, enables its inspiring insights to be appreciated.
Highlights
Several members of the Frankfurt School dealt with ‘criminality’ and social exclusion
The result was a sample of 110 respondents, approximately 5% of all San Quentin prisoners
By adhering to the orthodox variant of psychoanalysis – with its emphasis on the Oedipus complex – the result was ironically a strange idolisation of the most cultural-industrial of all psychoanalytic products, Lindner’s Rebel Without a Cause, and the adoption of its conservative criticism of rebels, accompanied by their de-socialisation, individualisation and pathologisation. This historical-sociological analysis of the empirical flaws in the San Quentin interviews and its interpretation has shown a major shift in the theory of pseudo rebellion from Fromm’s original theory towards a more superficial and technical use of psychoanalytic terms
Summary
Several members of the Frankfurt School dealt with ‘criminality’ and social exclusion. Neumann to critical theorists of later generations like Heinz Steinert, ‘criminality’ was a side issue for many critical theorists, including Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, who, for example, took note of Rusche and Kirchheimer’s supposedly empiricist work without paying it great attention (cf Wiggershaus, 1988: 263–265). Both worked with ascriptive ad-hoc-terms of ‘the criminal‘, rather jauntily comparing Nazi elites to Mafia-like ‘rackets’ in the Dialectic of Enlightenment (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1969: 162 and 182) – a theory developed as quickly as it was abandoned (cf Ziege, 2009: 125f.; Wiggershaus, 1988: 356f.)
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