He is aware of how a man of his general
political
outlook should react to each political issue but he is not aware of the issues themselves.
Adorno-T-Authoritarian-Personality-Harper-Bros-1950
let them have a voice in the election but should not be allowed to have any power.
(You mean they should not be allowed to put up any candidates?
) No, unless they get a majority.
"
One of the most extreme examples is the high-scoring woman F121, who "was never good at school work" and apparently had very little general education.
Not interested, not informed. Thinks Roosevelt has been good and should see us through the war. Otherwise has no opinions. She had written on the side of the questionnaire, asking about political parties: "Don't know these parties. "
Again, 5016, a housewife, graduated from high school, high on F and E but middle on PEC, referred to by the interviewer as "being of moderately high intelligence," says '
"I hear that communists and socialists are both bad. "
By contrast, 5052, the Spanish-Negro entertainer, high on F and PEC, middle on E, has an opinion of his own on communism and apparently some sym- pathy with communists, but his opinion is no less startling:
"All of the people in the entertainment world who are communists are good guys. "
On further questioning it comes out that according to his opinion
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 66 I Communism seems to be a so'rt of social club wh~ch holds meetings and raises
money for worthy causes.
Somewhat exceptional is the statement of the moderately low-scoring call- house girl, 5035, who, before she chose the profession of prostitute, was a graduate of the University of California. She is strongly interested in union activities and actually lost her former job as a dancing teacher because of such activities, but refused on the questionnaire to. mark any questions with regard to political groups, for which she gives the following explanation:
"I am very confused about politics because I talk about them a great deal with our clients here and they all have different opinions. It was a struggle for me to get through economics in college. "
In practical issues, however, her views are very liberal and even radical. The self-accusing attitude of women with regard to political matters seems to be most common among medium and low scorers; this is consistent with
the latter's general introspective and self-critical attitude.
An example is the 17-year-old student of social work, Fz28, who is middle
on E and F but high on PEC:
"I am a little ashamed about this subject. I hate to be ignorant about anything but frankly, I don't know anything about politics. I am for Roosevelt, of course, but I don't think I have developed any ideas of my own. Mother and Jim talk about things, but it is mostly social work shop. I intend to read a lot and think a lot about things because I believe all intelligent people should have ideas. "
Interesting also is the low scorer, F517, a 20-year-old freshman student ma- joring in music, who accuses herself of ignorance and dependence, though her general attitude, particularly with regard to minority questions, shows that she is rather articulate and outspoken and that she differs from her parents.
"I don't know much about it. I'm quite dependent-! get my opinions from my father. He is a die-hard Republican. He did not like Roosevelt but I think he did some good things (such as making things better for the poor people). "
It would go beyond the scope of the present study to attempt a full expla- nation of political ignorance so strikingly in contrast to the level of informa- tion in many other matters and to the highly rational way in which most of our subjects decide about the means and ends of their own lives. The ultimate reason for this ignorance might well be the opaqueness of the social, eco- nomic, and political situation to all those who are not in full command of all the resources of stored knowledge and theoretical thinking. In its present phase, our social system tends objectively and automatically to produce "curtains" which make it impossible for the naive person really to see what it is all about. These objective conditions are enhanced by powerful economic and social forces which, purposely or automatically, keep the people ig- norant. The very fact that our social system is on the defense, as it were, that
? 662 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
capitalism, instead of exparding the old way and opening up innumerable opportunities to the people, has to maintain itself somewhat precariously and to block critical insights which were regarded as "progressive" one hun- dred years ago but are viewed as potentially dangerous today, makes for a one-sided presentation of the facts, for manipulated information, and for certain shifts of emphasis which tend to check the universal enlightenment otherwise furthered by the technological development of communications.
? Once again, as in the era of the transition from feudalism to middle-class society, knowing too much has assumed a subversive touch, as it were. This tendency is met halfway by the "authoritarian" frame of mind of large sec- tions of the population. The transformation of our social system from some- thing dynamic into something conservative, a status quo, struggling for its perpetuation, is reflected by the attitudes and opinions of all those who, for reasons of vested interests or psychological conditions, identify themselves with the existing setup. In order not to undermine their own pattern of identification, they unconsciously do not want to know too much and are ready to accept superficial or distorted information as long as it confirms the world in which they want to go on living. It would be erroneous to ascribe the general state of ignorance and confusion in political matters to natural stupidity or to the mythological "immaturity" of the people. Stu- pidity may be due to psychological repressions more than to a basic lack of the capacity for thinking. Only in this way, it seems, can the low level of political intelligence even among our college sample be understood. They find it difficult to think and even to learn because they are afraid they might think the wrong thoughts or learn the wrong things. It may be added that this fear, probably often due to the father's refusal to tell the child more than he is supposedly capable of understanding, is continuously reinforced by an educational system which tends to discourage anything supposedly "speculative," or which cannot be corroborated by surface findings, and stated in terms of "facts and figures. "
The discrepancy brought about by the absence of political training and the abundance of political news with which. the population is flooded and which actually or fictitiously presupposes such training, is only one among many aspects of this general condition. With reference to the specific focus of our research, two aspects of political ignorance may be emphasized. One is that being "intelligent" today means largely to lookafter one's self, to take care of one's advantages whereas, to use Veblen's words, "idle curiosity" is discouraged. Since the pertinence of economic and political matters to private existence, however, is largely obscured to the population even now, they do not bother about things which apparently have little bearing on their fate and upon which they have, as they are dimly aware, not too much influence.
The second aspect of ignorance which has to be stressed here, is of a more psychological nature. Political news and comment like all other information
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 663
poured out by the radio, the press, and the newsreels, is generally absorbed during leisure time and falls, in a certain way, within the framework of "entertainment. " Politics is viewed in much the same way as sport or the movies, not as something directly involved with one's own participation in the process of production. Viewed within this frame of reference, however, politics is necessarily "disappointing. " It appears to people conditioned by an industrial culture and its specific kinds of "entertainment values" as drab, cold, dry-as boring. This may be enhanced by that undercurrent of Amer- ican tradition which regards politics somehow as a dirty business with which a respectable person should have but little to do. Disappointment in politics as a leisure-time activity which pays no quick returns probably makes for indifference, and it is quite possible that the prevailing ignorance is due not merely to unfamiliarity with the facts but also a kind of resistance against what is supposed to serve as a pastime and mostly tends to be disagreeable. A pattern most often to be observed, perhaps, among women, namely, skip- ping the political sections of newspapers, where information is available, and turning immediately to gossip columns, crime stories, the woman's page, and
so forth, may be an extreme expression of something more general.
To sum up, political ignorance would seem to be specifically determined by the fact that political knowledge as a rule does not primarily help to further individual aims in reality, whereas, on the other hand, it does not help
the individual to evade reality either.
2. TICKET THINKING AND PERSONALIZATION IN POLITICS
The frame of mind concomitant with ignorance and confusion may be called one of lack of political experience in the sense that the whole sphere of politics and economics is "aloof" from the subject,. that he does not reach it with concrete innervations, insights, and reactions but has to contend with it in an indirect, alienated way. Yet, politics and economics, alien as they may be from individual life, and largely beyond the reach of individual decision and action, decisively affect the individual's fate. In our present society, in the era of all-comprising social organization and total war, even the most naive person becomes aware of the impact of the politico-economic sphere. Here belongs, of course, primarily the war situation, where literally life and death of the individual depend on apparently far-away political dynamics. But also issues such as the role of unionism in American economy, strikes, the development of free enterprise toward monopolism and therewith the question of state control, make themselves felt apparently down to the most
? private and intimate realms of the individual.
This, against the background of ignorance and confusion, makes for
anxiety on the ego level that ties in only too well with childhood anxieties. The individual has to cope with problems which he actually does not under- stand, and he has to develop certain techniques of orientation, however crude
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
and fallacious they may be, which help him to find his way through the dark, as it were. 2 These means fulfill a dual function: on the one hand, they provide the individual with a kind of knowledge, or with substitutes for knowledge, which makes it possible for him to take a stand where it is expected of him, whilst he is actually not equipped to do so. On the other hand, by themselves they alleviate psychologically the feeling of anxiety and uncertainty and provide the individual with the illusion of some kind of intellectual security, of something he can stick to even if he feels, underneath, the inadequacy of his opinions.
The task of how to understand the "ununderstandable," paradoxical in itself, leads toward a paradoxical solution, that is to say, the subjects tend to employ two devices which contradict each other, a contradiction that expresses the impasse in which many people find themselves. These two devices are stereotypy and personalization. It is easy to see that these "devices" are repe- titions of infantile patterns. The specific interaction of stereotypy and prej- udice has been discussed in detail in the preceding chapter. It may now be appropriate to review ideological stereotypy and its counterpart, personal- ization, in a broader context, and to relate it to more fundamental principles long established by psychology. Rigid dichotomies, such as that between "good and bad," "we and the others," "I and the world" date back to our earliest developmental phases. While serving as necessary constructs in order to enable us to cope, by mental anticipation and rough organization, with an otherwise chaotic reality, even the stereotypes of the child bear the hallmark of stunted experience and anxiety. They point back to the "chaotic" nature of reality, and its clash with the omnipotence fantasies of earliest infancy. Our stereotypes are both tools and scars: the "bad man" is the stereotype par excellence. At the. same time, the psychological ambiguity inherent in the use of stereotypes, which are both necessary and constricting forces, stimulate regularly a countertendency. We try, by a kind of ritual, to soften the otherwise rigid, to make human, close, part of ourselves (or the family) that which appears, because of its very alienness, threatening. The child who is afraid of the bad man is at the same time tempted to call every stranger "uncle. " The traumatic element in both these attitudes continuously serves as an obstacle to the reality principle, although both also function as means of adjustment. When transformed into character traits, the mechanisms in- volved make more and more for irrationality. The opaqueness of the present political and economic situation for the average person provides an ideal opportunity for retrogression to the infantile level of stereotypy and person- alization. The political rationalizations used by the uninformed and confused are compulsive revivals of irrational mechanisms never overcome during the
2 This has been pointed out with regard to the imagery of the Jews. See Chapter XVI, p. 618f.
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 665
individual's growth. This seems to be one of the main links between opinions and psychological determinants.
Once again, stereotypy helps to organize what appears to the ignorant as chaotic: the less he is able to enter into a really cognitive process, the more stubbornly he clings to certain patterns, belief in which saves him the trouble of really going into the matter.
Where the rigidly compulsive nature of the stereotype cuts off the dialec- tics of trial and error, stultification enters the picture. Stereotypy becomes- to use J. F. Brown's term-stereopathy. This is the case in the political area where a firm bulk of ignorance and lack of any relation to the objective material forbids any real experience. In addition, industrial standardization of innumerable phenomena of modern life enhances stereotypical thinking. The more stereotyped life itself becomes, the more the stereopath feels in the right, sees his frame of thinking vindicated by reality. Modern mass com- munciations, moulded after industrial production, spread a whole system of stereotypes which, while still being fundamentally "ununderstandable" to the individual, allow him at any moment to appear as being up to date and "knowing all about it. " Thus, stereotyped thinking in political matters is almost inescapable.
However, the adult individual, like the child, has to pay a heavy price for the comfort he draws from stereotypy. The stereotype, while being a means of translating reality in a kind of multiple-choice questionnaire where every issue is subsumed and can be decided by a plus or minus mark, keeps the world as aloof, abstract, "nonexperienced" as it was before. Moreover, since it is above all the alienness and coldness of political reality which causes the individual's anxieties, these anxieties are not fully remedied by a device which itself reflects the threatening, streamlining process of the real social world. Thus, stereotypy calls again for its very opposite: personalization. Here, the term assumes a very definite meaning: the tendency to describe objective social and economic processes, political programs, internal and external ten- sions in terms of some person identified with the case in question rather than taking the trouble to perform the impersonal intellectual operations required by the abstractness of the social processes themselves.
Both stereotypy and personalization are inadequate to reality. Their inter- pretation may therefore be regarded as a first step in the direction of under- standing the complex of "psychotic" thinking which appears to be a crucial characteristic of the fascist character. It is obvious, however, that this sub- iective failure to grasp reality is not primarily and exclusively a matter of the psychological dynamics of the individuals involved, but is in some part due to reality itself, to the relationship or lack of relationship between this reality and the individual. Stereotypy misses reality in so far as it dodges the concrete and contents itself with preconceived, rigid, and overgeneralized
? 666 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
ideas to which the individual attributes a kind of magical omnipotence. Con- versely, personalization dodges the real abstractness, that is to say, the "reifi- cation" of a social reality which is determined by property relations and in which the human beings themselves are, as it were, mere appendages. Stereo- typy and personalization are two divergent parts of an actually nonexperi- enced world, parts which are not only irreconcilable with each other, but which also do not allow for any addition which would reconstruct the picture of the real.
a. CAsEs OF PoLITICAL TICKET THINKING. W e limit ourselves to describing a few cases of political stereotypy. ?
M359 from the University Extension Testing Class is departmental man- ager for a leather company. He is high onE and PEC but middle on F. While imbued with authoritarian ideas he shows a certain imaginativeness and gen- eral disposition to discursive argumentation somewhat different from the typical high scorer's mentality. It is thus the more striking to find that the political section of his interview is completely abstract and cliche-like. Just because this subject is by no means a fanatic, his statements serve well to illustrate how ignorance is covered up by phraseology, and how the stereo- types, borrowed from the vernacular of current newspaper editorials, make for the acceptance of reactionary trends. In order to give a concrete picture of how this mechanism works, his political statements are given in full. This
may also supply us with an example of how the various topics with which we shall have to deal in detail afterwards form a kind of ideological unit once a person is under the sway of political semi-information:
(Political trends? ) "I am not very happy by the outward aspect of things, too much politics instead of a basis of equality and justice for all men. Running of the entire country is determined by the party in power, not very optimistic outlook. Under Roosevelt, the people were willing to turn entire schedule of living over to the government, wanted everything done for them. (Main problem? ) No question but the problem of placing our servicemen back into employment, giving them a degree of happiness is a major problem. If not handled soon, may produce a serious danger. More firm organization of servicemen. "
(What might do? ) "Boycott the politicians and establish the old-time govern- ment that we should have had all along. (What is this? ) Government of, by, and for the people. " Subject emphasizes the moderate, average man is the serviceman. (Unions? ) "Not satisfied with them. One characteristic is especially unsatisfactory. Theory is wonderful and would hate to see them abolished, but too much tendency to level all men, all standards of workmanship and effort by equalizing pay. Other objection is not enough democratic attitude by the membership, generally con- trolled by minority group. " Subject emphasizes the compulsion imposed upon men to join but not to participate with the results of ignorant union leaders. He empha- sizes the need to raise the standards of voting by members and to require rotation of office and high qualifications for officers. He compares these adversely with business leaders.
(Government control? ) "There is too much tendency to level everything, doesn't give man opportunity to excel. " Subject emphasizes the mediocrity of government
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 667
workers, pay is insufficient to. attract the best calibre of men and no incentive
plans, etc.
(Threats to present government? ) "Probably most dangerous threat to our
government today, and that also applies to union org~nization, and life in general, 1s disinterest, the tendency to let the other fellow do 1t on the part of great num- bers of people so that things go on the way a few selfish men determine. "
The decisive twist is achieved by jumping from the very abstract idea of "equality and justice for all men" to the equally formalistic condemnation of "running the country by the party in power"-which happens to be the party of the New Deal. The vague cliche of an all-comprising democracy serves as an instrument against any specific democratic contents. It should not be overlooked, however, that some of his statements on unions-where he has some experience-make sense.
M122sa, a medium scorer who has been eighteen months at sea and is strongly interested in engineering, is a good example of stereotypy in politics employed by otherwise moderate people, and of its intimate relationship to ignorance. To this man one of the greatest political problems today is "the unions. " Describing them, he applies indiscriminately and without entering into the matter three current cliches-that of the social danger, that of gov- ernment interference, and that of the luxurious life of union leaders-simply by repeating certain formulae without caring much about their interconnec- tion or their consistency:
"For one thing they have too much power. Cross between the socialistic part of the union and the government . . . seems to go to the other extreme. Government inv:estigation . . . (subject seems rather confused in his ideas here). The unions . . . socialistic form in there. I know, I belonged to a few unions. They get up there and then call you brother and then drive off in a Cadillac. . . . Nine times out of ten the heads of the unions don't know anything of the trade. It's a good racket . . . "
Most of his subsequent answers are closely in line with a general pattern of reactionism, formulated mostly in terms of "I don't believe in it" without discussing the issue itself. The following passages may suffice as an illus- tration.
($zs,ooo limit on salaries? ) "I don't believe in that. "
(Most dangerous threats to present form of government? ) "I believe it's in the government itself. Too many powers of its own. "
(What ought to be done? ) "Going to have to solve a lot of other problems first. Get goods back on the market. "
(\Vhat about this conflict. between Russia on the one hand and England and this country on the other? ) "I don't particularly care for Russia and I don't particularly
'care for England. "
In this case, cli. ches are manifestly used in order to cover up lack of infor- mation. It is as if each question to which he does not know any specific answer conjures up the carry-overs of innumerable press slogans which he repeats in order to demonstrate that he is one of those who do not like to be
? 668 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
told and do like to think. Underlying is only a rigid pattern of yeas and nays.
He is aware of how a man of his general political outlook should react to each political issue but he is not aware of the issues themselves. He therefore supplements his plus and minus marks by phrases which more often than not are mere gaucheries.
F z39 belongs to the type which is to be characterized in Chapter XIX as "rigid low. " Her most outstanding trait is her violent hatred of alcohol- which suggests deeper-lying "high" trends. Liquors are her Jews, as it were. She regards herself as a Christian Socialist and solves most problems not by discussing them but referring to what the religious socialist should think.
The break between her opinions and any kind of substantial experience is evidenced by the following statement:
"My favorite world statesman is Litvinov. I think the most dramatic speech of modern times is the one he made at the Geneva Conference when he pleaded for collective security. It has made us very happy to see the fog of ignorance and distrust surrounding the Soviet Union clearing away during this war. Things are not settled yet, though. There are many fascists in this country who would fight Roosevelt if they could. "
She has a ready-made formula for the problem of nonviolence in interna- tional affairs:
"Of course, I am an internationalist. Would I be a true Christian if I weren't? And I have always been a pacifist. Wars are completely unnecessary. This one was. That is, it could have been avoided if the democratic people had recognized their own interest early enough and taken the proper steps. But they did not. And now we ask ourselves: would the interests of the people of the world be advanced by a fascist victory? Obviously they would not. So we must support this war com- pletely because we are faced with a clear choice and cannot avoid it. "
She offers a clear example of the association of stereotypy and personaliza- tion. Whereas her political persuasion should induce her to think in objective socioeconomic terms, she actually thinks in terms of favorite people, prefer- ably famous ones, of humans who are public institutions as it were-of "human stereotypes. "
"My second favorite world statesman is our own President although, perhaps, I should say Mrs. Roosevelt. I don't think he would have been anything without her. She really made him what he is. I believe the Roosevelts have a very sincere interest in people and their welfare. There is one thing that bothers me about them though- specially Mrs. Roosevelt-that is-liquor. She is not against it and it seems to me she should know how much we would be improved as a people without it. "
She exhibits a significant characteristic of the low scorers' political stereo- typy: a kind of mechanical belief in the triumph of progress, the counterpart to the high scorers' frequent references to impending doom which is also a keynote of the above-quoted political statements of M359?
"All one has to do is look backward to feel optimistic. I would not be a true
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 669
Christian if I did not believe that man's progre~s is upward. W e are so much farther along than we were a century ago. Social legislation that was only a dream is an accomplished fact. "
b. ExAMPLES OF PERSONALIZATION. The tendency towards personalization feeds on the American tradition of personal democracy as expressed most strikingly by the power delegated to the executive branch of the government by our Constitution, and also on that aspect of traditional American liberalism which regards competition as a contest between men, where the better man is likely to conquer. Cause and effect seem to be somewhat reversed: whereas in market economy the supposedly "better man" is defined by competitive success, people have come to think that success falls to the better man. Con- sistent with this is the highly personalized character of political propaganda, particularly in electioneering where the objective issues at stake are mostly hidden behind the exaltation of the individuals involved, often in categories which have but very little to do with the functions those individuals are supposed to fulfill. The ideal of a democracy, where the people have their immediate say, is frequently misused under conditions of today's mass so- ciety, as an ideology which covers up the omnipotence of objective social tendencies and, more specifically, the control exercised by the party machines.
The material on personalization is both abundant and monotonous. A few examples may suffice.
The low-scoring man, Mzz6, prefers Wallace to Dewey because
"Wallace is the better man and I usually vote for the better man. "
Here personalization is the more striking since these two figures are actually defined by objectively antagonistic platforms, whereas it is more than doubt- ful whether the interviewee, or, for that matter, the great majority of the American people, is in any position to say what they are like "as men. "
The high-scoring man, M 102, employs almost literally the same expression as Mzz6:
". . . put down D~mocratic, but I never thought much about the party. I don't vote for the party but for the best man. "
Professed belief in political theories is no antidote for personalization. Mz 17, another "low" man, regards himself as a "scientific socialist" and is full of confidence in sociological psychology. But when asked about American
? parties, he comes out with the following statement:
"I don't know about that. I'm only interested in the man and his abilities. I don't care what party he belongs to. (What man do you like? ) F. D. R. is one of the greatest. I did not like him when he was elected but I admit I was wrong. He did a marvelous job. He was concerned with the benefit of the country. Truman is doing a good job so far. The senators and congressmen are run-of-the-mill. Dewey
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
is outstanding, I think; he has potentialities. He is apparently sincere and honest and concerned with the whole country. He did a good job as District Attorney. "
More aspects of personalization will be described when our interviewees' attitudes towards Roosevelt are under consideration. Here, we content our- selves with suggesting two qualities which seem to play a great role in the personalization complex and which recur regularly in our high scorers' statements about Dewey: Honesty and Sincerity.
F114, a high-scoring woman, knows that Dewey "is strong, young, cour- ageous, honest. He may have faults, but they're useful faults. I felt he was a strong, young person. " Obviously, this statement is linked to the adulation of strength that plays so large a role in the psychology of our high scorers
(cf. Chapter VII). The honesty of the former D. A. is derived from his much- advertised drive against political racketeering and corruption. He is sup- posed to be honest because he has exterminated, according to his propa- gandist build-up, the dishonest. Honesty seems largely to be a rationalization for vindictiveness. Speaking psychologically, the image of Dewey is a projec- tion of the punitive superego, or rather one of those collective images which replace the superego in an externalized, rigid form. The praise of his honesty, together with the repeated emphasis on his strength and youth, fall within the "strong man" pattern.
Fu7, another high scorer, of the Professional Women group, has a maximal score on A-S and is generally extremely conservative. Her similarly personalized appraisal of Dewey strikes a slightly different note but fits within the same pattern: ?
She feels that Dewey knows the value of money better than Roosevelt, because he came from a family that did not have too much.
The punitiveness behind the praise of the honest man shows itself in this example as hatred against comfortable living, against the "snobbish upper class" who supposedly enjoy the things which one has to deny to oneself. Dewey, per contra, is the symbol of one's own frustrations and is uncon- sciously, i. e. , sadomasochistically, expected to perpetuate frustration. What he seems to stand for within the minds of the high-scoring subjects is a state of affairs in which everybody has "learned the value of a dollar. " Identifica- tion with him is easy because as a prospective President he has the halo of power whereas his frugality is that of the middle-class subject herself.
Perhaps it is not accidental that infatuation with honesty is particularly frequent among women. They see life from the consumer's side; they do not want to be cheated, and therefore the noisy promise of honesty has some appeal to them.
As to the differentiation between high and low scorers with regard to per- sonalization, an impression may tentatively be formulated which is hard to substantiate but consistent with our clinical findings. The element of per-
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 67 I
sonalization that counts most heavily with the low scorers seems to be con- fidence, the idea that public figures are good, friendly fathers who take care of one, or of the "underdog. " It seems to be derived from an actual life relationship to one's parents, from unblocked positive transference. This observation will be given relief when the attitude of our subjects towards Roosevelt is discussed. Conversely, the personal trait most appreciated by the high scorer seems to be strength. Social power and control, the ultimate focus of their identification, is translated by the personalization mechanism into a quality inherent in certain individuals. The symbols of the powers that be are drawn from the imagery of a stern father to whom one "looks up. "
One last aspect of personalization may be mentioned. To know something about a person helps one to seem "informed" without actually going into the matter: it is easier to talk about names than about issues, while at the same time the names are recognized identification marks for all current topics. Thus, spurious eersonalization is an ideal behavior pattern for the semi- erudite, a device somewhere in the middle between complete ignorance and that kind of "knowledge" which is being promoted by mass communica- tion and industrialized culture.
To sum up: ever more anonymous and opaque social processes make it in- creasingly difficult to integrate the limited sphere of one's personal life experi- ence with objective social dynamics. Social alienation is hidden by a surface phenomenon in which the very opposite is being stressed: personalization of political attitudes and habits offers compensation for the dehumanization of the social sphere which is at the bottom of most of today's grievances. As less and less actually depends on individual spontaneity in our political and social organization, the more people are likely to cling to the idea that the man is everything and to seek a substitute for their own social impotence in the supposed omnipotence of great personalities.
3. SURFACE IDEOLOGY AND REAL OPINION
The alienation between the political sphere and the life experience of the individual, which the latter often tries to master by psychologically deter- mined intellectual makeshifts such as stereotypy and personalization, some- times results in a gap between what the subject professes to think about poli- tics and economy and what he really thinks. His "official" ideology conforms to what he supposes he has to think; his real ideas are an expression of his more immediate personal needs as well as of his psychological urges. The "official" ideology pertains to the objectified, alienated sphere of the political,
'the "real opinion" to the subject's own sphere, and the contradiction between the two expresses their irreconcilability.
Since this formal structure of political thinking has an immediate bearing upon one of the key phenomena of susceptibility to fascism, namely upon pseudoconservatism, it may be appropriate to offer a few examples here.
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
Fzz6, a prejudiced woman of the University Extension Group, offers an example of a conflict between surface ideology and real attitude through her somewhat deviate pattern of scale scores: she is middle on E and F but low on PEC. In her case, the deeper determinants are doubtless potentially fascist as evidenced particularly by her strong racial prejudice against both Negroes and Jews. In other political issues the picture is highly ambivalent. Charac- teristically, she classes herself as a Democrat, but voted for Willkie and then for Dewey. She "wasn't against Roosevelt," but her statement that "no man is indispensable" thinly veils her underlying hostility. She
"knew what Hoover stood for, and I had no use for him. But that didn't mean I had to worship Roosevelt. He was a good man, but when I heard people weeping and wailing over his death, I was just disgusted. As though he were indispensable. "
The amazing irregularity is an emphatically pro-Russian statement and an outspokenly antifascist attitude in international politics:
"Now, I am a great admirer of Russia. Perhaps I shouldn't say it out loud, but I am. I think they are really trying to do something for all the people. Of course there was a lot of suffering and bloodshed but think of what they had to struggle against. My husband really gets disturbed about this. He says I ought to go to Russia if I like communism so much. He says that to admire communism is to want a change and he thinks it is very wrong for me to even sound as though I wanted any change when we have enough and are comfortable and are getting along all right. I tell him that is very selfish and also that some people under the Czar might have felt that way but when the situation got so bad there was a revolution they got wiped out too. (American Communists? ) Well, I couldn't say because I don't really know anything about them.
"I don't hold the United States blameless. I think we have lots of faults. We talk now as though we had always hated war and tried to stop this one. That isn't true. There were ways to stop this war if they had wanted to. I remember when Mus- solini moved on Ethiopia. I always think of that as the real beginning of this war. And we were not interested in stopping that. My husband doesn't like me to criti- cize the United States. "
The frequent interspersion of this statement with reference to disagreements with her husband, from whom she is "very much different politically" and with whom she has "terrible arguments" leads us to assume that her "progres- sive" political views in areas apparently not highly affect-laden by her are rationalizations of her strong resentment of the man of whom she says "I don't think we can live for ourselves alone. " One is tempted to hypothesize that she wants him to get mad at her when she speaks in favor of Russia. In her case, the broad-mindedness and rationality of surface opinion seems to be conditioned by strong underlying, repressed irrationalities:
Interviewer did not have much success with very personal data. She turned aside questions that came close to her deeper feelings. There was no depth to the discus- sion of her husband.
When it comes, however, to political topics which, for some reason unex-
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plored in the interview, really mean something to this subject, she forgets all about her own rationality and gives vent to her vindictiveness though with a bad conscience, as evidenced by her previously quoted statement (Chap-
ter XVI) that "she is not very proud of her anti-Semitic bias. "
Mpo, of the University Extension Testing Class, is a low-scoring man, hesitant, apologetic, shy, and unaggressive. He wants to become a landscape architect. His political views are consciously liberal and definitely nonpreju- diced. He struggles to maintain his liberalism continuously, but this is not easy for him wi\:h regard to certain political matters, his impulses in many instances disavowing what he states. He begins with the typical low scorer's
statement:
"I am afraid I don't have as many ideas about politics and government as I should, but I think-a lot of people are more liberal now than they have been recendy. Possibly some like the change that is taking place in England-I don't know. "
He first takes a mildly antistrike attitude:
"I don't know, I cannot see that, as just a straight demand, without taking into consideration the company and its ties and all that. I have not read much about that but . . . in a large company . . . maybe they might be able to take it, all right, but in little shops . . . and if it did go through, and even if it did not have disastrous (effects) on business closing . . . price rises would make it come out even anyway. I guess I am really not in favor of strikes but I can see it just about. . . . "
Then he talks himself into a more definite stand against strikes, introduced by the still democratic "getting together" formula.
"They ought to get together and give, maybe, a 20 per cent or 30 per cent raise, then maybe kinda split it . . . and these strikes . . . just start at the wrong end . . . because if the strike is setded . . . they still have to come to some sort of agreement . . . and it's gonna be forced and men'll be driven . . . I guess human nature just is not that way but. . . ? "
The last statement, rather confused, actually belongs to the high-scorer pat- tern concerning the inhert badness of human nature (cf. Chapter VII).
One of the most extreme examples is the high-scoring woman F121, who "was never good at school work" and apparently had very little general education.
Not interested, not informed. Thinks Roosevelt has been good and should see us through the war. Otherwise has no opinions. She had written on the side of the questionnaire, asking about political parties: "Don't know these parties. "
Again, 5016, a housewife, graduated from high school, high on F and E but middle on PEC, referred to by the interviewer as "being of moderately high intelligence," says '
"I hear that communists and socialists are both bad. "
By contrast, 5052, the Spanish-Negro entertainer, high on F and PEC, middle on E, has an opinion of his own on communism and apparently some sym- pathy with communists, but his opinion is no less startling:
"All of the people in the entertainment world who are communists are good guys. "
On further questioning it comes out that according to his opinion
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 66 I Communism seems to be a so'rt of social club wh~ch holds meetings and raises
money for worthy causes.
Somewhat exceptional is the statement of the moderately low-scoring call- house girl, 5035, who, before she chose the profession of prostitute, was a graduate of the University of California. She is strongly interested in union activities and actually lost her former job as a dancing teacher because of such activities, but refused on the questionnaire to. mark any questions with regard to political groups, for which she gives the following explanation:
"I am very confused about politics because I talk about them a great deal with our clients here and they all have different opinions. It was a struggle for me to get through economics in college. "
In practical issues, however, her views are very liberal and even radical. The self-accusing attitude of women with regard to political matters seems to be most common among medium and low scorers; this is consistent with
the latter's general introspective and self-critical attitude.
An example is the 17-year-old student of social work, Fz28, who is middle
on E and F but high on PEC:
"I am a little ashamed about this subject. I hate to be ignorant about anything but frankly, I don't know anything about politics. I am for Roosevelt, of course, but I don't think I have developed any ideas of my own. Mother and Jim talk about things, but it is mostly social work shop. I intend to read a lot and think a lot about things because I believe all intelligent people should have ideas. "
Interesting also is the low scorer, F517, a 20-year-old freshman student ma- joring in music, who accuses herself of ignorance and dependence, though her general attitude, particularly with regard to minority questions, shows that she is rather articulate and outspoken and that she differs from her parents.
"I don't know much about it. I'm quite dependent-! get my opinions from my father. He is a die-hard Republican. He did not like Roosevelt but I think he did some good things (such as making things better for the poor people). "
It would go beyond the scope of the present study to attempt a full expla- nation of political ignorance so strikingly in contrast to the level of informa- tion in many other matters and to the highly rational way in which most of our subjects decide about the means and ends of their own lives. The ultimate reason for this ignorance might well be the opaqueness of the social, eco- nomic, and political situation to all those who are not in full command of all the resources of stored knowledge and theoretical thinking. In its present phase, our social system tends objectively and automatically to produce "curtains" which make it impossible for the naive person really to see what it is all about. These objective conditions are enhanced by powerful economic and social forces which, purposely or automatically, keep the people ig- norant. The very fact that our social system is on the defense, as it were, that
? 662 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
capitalism, instead of exparding the old way and opening up innumerable opportunities to the people, has to maintain itself somewhat precariously and to block critical insights which were regarded as "progressive" one hun- dred years ago but are viewed as potentially dangerous today, makes for a one-sided presentation of the facts, for manipulated information, and for certain shifts of emphasis which tend to check the universal enlightenment otherwise furthered by the technological development of communications.
? Once again, as in the era of the transition from feudalism to middle-class society, knowing too much has assumed a subversive touch, as it were. This tendency is met halfway by the "authoritarian" frame of mind of large sec- tions of the population. The transformation of our social system from some- thing dynamic into something conservative, a status quo, struggling for its perpetuation, is reflected by the attitudes and opinions of all those who, for reasons of vested interests or psychological conditions, identify themselves with the existing setup. In order not to undermine their own pattern of identification, they unconsciously do not want to know too much and are ready to accept superficial or distorted information as long as it confirms the world in which they want to go on living. It would be erroneous to ascribe the general state of ignorance and confusion in political matters to natural stupidity or to the mythological "immaturity" of the people. Stu- pidity may be due to psychological repressions more than to a basic lack of the capacity for thinking. Only in this way, it seems, can the low level of political intelligence even among our college sample be understood. They find it difficult to think and even to learn because they are afraid they might think the wrong thoughts or learn the wrong things. It may be added that this fear, probably often due to the father's refusal to tell the child more than he is supposedly capable of understanding, is continuously reinforced by an educational system which tends to discourage anything supposedly "speculative," or which cannot be corroborated by surface findings, and stated in terms of "facts and figures. "
The discrepancy brought about by the absence of political training and the abundance of political news with which. the population is flooded and which actually or fictitiously presupposes such training, is only one among many aspects of this general condition. With reference to the specific focus of our research, two aspects of political ignorance may be emphasized. One is that being "intelligent" today means largely to lookafter one's self, to take care of one's advantages whereas, to use Veblen's words, "idle curiosity" is discouraged. Since the pertinence of economic and political matters to private existence, however, is largely obscured to the population even now, they do not bother about things which apparently have little bearing on their fate and upon which they have, as they are dimly aware, not too much influence.
The second aspect of ignorance which has to be stressed here, is of a more psychological nature. Political news and comment like all other information
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poured out by the radio, the press, and the newsreels, is generally absorbed during leisure time and falls, in a certain way, within the framework of "entertainment. " Politics is viewed in much the same way as sport or the movies, not as something directly involved with one's own participation in the process of production. Viewed within this frame of reference, however, politics is necessarily "disappointing. " It appears to people conditioned by an industrial culture and its specific kinds of "entertainment values" as drab, cold, dry-as boring. This may be enhanced by that undercurrent of Amer- ican tradition which regards politics somehow as a dirty business with which a respectable person should have but little to do. Disappointment in politics as a leisure-time activity which pays no quick returns probably makes for indifference, and it is quite possible that the prevailing ignorance is due not merely to unfamiliarity with the facts but also a kind of resistance against what is supposed to serve as a pastime and mostly tends to be disagreeable. A pattern most often to be observed, perhaps, among women, namely, skip- ping the political sections of newspapers, where information is available, and turning immediately to gossip columns, crime stories, the woman's page, and
so forth, may be an extreme expression of something more general.
To sum up, political ignorance would seem to be specifically determined by the fact that political knowledge as a rule does not primarily help to further individual aims in reality, whereas, on the other hand, it does not help
the individual to evade reality either.
2. TICKET THINKING AND PERSONALIZATION IN POLITICS
The frame of mind concomitant with ignorance and confusion may be called one of lack of political experience in the sense that the whole sphere of politics and economics is "aloof" from the subject,. that he does not reach it with concrete innervations, insights, and reactions but has to contend with it in an indirect, alienated way. Yet, politics and economics, alien as they may be from individual life, and largely beyond the reach of individual decision and action, decisively affect the individual's fate. In our present society, in the era of all-comprising social organization and total war, even the most naive person becomes aware of the impact of the politico-economic sphere. Here belongs, of course, primarily the war situation, where literally life and death of the individual depend on apparently far-away political dynamics. But also issues such as the role of unionism in American economy, strikes, the development of free enterprise toward monopolism and therewith the question of state control, make themselves felt apparently down to the most
? private and intimate realms of the individual.
This, against the background of ignorance and confusion, makes for
anxiety on the ego level that ties in only too well with childhood anxieties. The individual has to cope with problems which he actually does not under- stand, and he has to develop certain techniques of orientation, however crude
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
and fallacious they may be, which help him to find his way through the dark, as it were. 2 These means fulfill a dual function: on the one hand, they provide the individual with a kind of knowledge, or with substitutes for knowledge, which makes it possible for him to take a stand where it is expected of him, whilst he is actually not equipped to do so. On the other hand, by themselves they alleviate psychologically the feeling of anxiety and uncertainty and provide the individual with the illusion of some kind of intellectual security, of something he can stick to even if he feels, underneath, the inadequacy of his opinions.
The task of how to understand the "ununderstandable," paradoxical in itself, leads toward a paradoxical solution, that is to say, the subjects tend to employ two devices which contradict each other, a contradiction that expresses the impasse in which many people find themselves. These two devices are stereotypy and personalization. It is easy to see that these "devices" are repe- titions of infantile patterns. The specific interaction of stereotypy and prej- udice has been discussed in detail in the preceding chapter. It may now be appropriate to review ideological stereotypy and its counterpart, personal- ization, in a broader context, and to relate it to more fundamental principles long established by psychology. Rigid dichotomies, such as that between "good and bad," "we and the others," "I and the world" date back to our earliest developmental phases. While serving as necessary constructs in order to enable us to cope, by mental anticipation and rough organization, with an otherwise chaotic reality, even the stereotypes of the child bear the hallmark of stunted experience and anxiety. They point back to the "chaotic" nature of reality, and its clash with the omnipotence fantasies of earliest infancy. Our stereotypes are both tools and scars: the "bad man" is the stereotype par excellence. At the. same time, the psychological ambiguity inherent in the use of stereotypes, which are both necessary and constricting forces, stimulate regularly a countertendency. We try, by a kind of ritual, to soften the otherwise rigid, to make human, close, part of ourselves (or the family) that which appears, because of its very alienness, threatening. The child who is afraid of the bad man is at the same time tempted to call every stranger "uncle. " The traumatic element in both these attitudes continuously serves as an obstacle to the reality principle, although both also function as means of adjustment. When transformed into character traits, the mechanisms in- volved make more and more for irrationality. The opaqueness of the present political and economic situation for the average person provides an ideal opportunity for retrogression to the infantile level of stereotypy and person- alization. The political rationalizations used by the uninformed and confused are compulsive revivals of irrational mechanisms never overcome during the
2 This has been pointed out with regard to the imagery of the Jews. See Chapter XVI, p. 618f.
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individual's growth. This seems to be one of the main links between opinions and psychological determinants.
Once again, stereotypy helps to organize what appears to the ignorant as chaotic: the less he is able to enter into a really cognitive process, the more stubbornly he clings to certain patterns, belief in which saves him the trouble of really going into the matter.
Where the rigidly compulsive nature of the stereotype cuts off the dialec- tics of trial and error, stultification enters the picture. Stereotypy becomes- to use J. F. Brown's term-stereopathy. This is the case in the political area where a firm bulk of ignorance and lack of any relation to the objective material forbids any real experience. In addition, industrial standardization of innumerable phenomena of modern life enhances stereotypical thinking. The more stereotyped life itself becomes, the more the stereopath feels in the right, sees his frame of thinking vindicated by reality. Modern mass com- munciations, moulded after industrial production, spread a whole system of stereotypes which, while still being fundamentally "ununderstandable" to the individual, allow him at any moment to appear as being up to date and "knowing all about it. " Thus, stereotyped thinking in political matters is almost inescapable.
However, the adult individual, like the child, has to pay a heavy price for the comfort he draws from stereotypy. The stereotype, while being a means of translating reality in a kind of multiple-choice questionnaire where every issue is subsumed and can be decided by a plus or minus mark, keeps the world as aloof, abstract, "nonexperienced" as it was before. Moreover, since it is above all the alienness and coldness of political reality which causes the individual's anxieties, these anxieties are not fully remedied by a device which itself reflects the threatening, streamlining process of the real social world. Thus, stereotypy calls again for its very opposite: personalization. Here, the term assumes a very definite meaning: the tendency to describe objective social and economic processes, political programs, internal and external ten- sions in terms of some person identified with the case in question rather than taking the trouble to perform the impersonal intellectual operations required by the abstractness of the social processes themselves.
Both stereotypy and personalization are inadequate to reality. Their inter- pretation may therefore be regarded as a first step in the direction of under- standing the complex of "psychotic" thinking which appears to be a crucial characteristic of the fascist character. It is obvious, however, that this sub- iective failure to grasp reality is not primarily and exclusively a matter of the psychological dynamics of the individuals involved, but is in some part due to reality itself, to the relationship or lack of relationship between this reality and the individual. Stereotypy misses reality in so far as it dodges the concrete and contents itself with preconceived, rigid, and overgeneralized
? 666 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
ideas to which the individual attributes a kind of magical omnipotence. Con- versely, personalization dodges the real abstractness, that is to say, the "reifi- cation" of a social reality which is determined by property relations and in which the human beings themselves are, as it were, mere appendages. Stereo- typy and personalization are two divergent parts of an actually nonexperi- enced world, parts which are not only irreconcilable with each other, but which also do not allow for any addition which would reconstruct the picture of the real.
a. CAsEs OF PoLITICAL TICKET THINKING. W e limit ourselves to describing a few cases of political stereotypy. ?
M359 from the University Extension Testing Class is departmental man- ager for a leather company. He is high onE and PEC but middle on F. While imbued with authoritarian ideas he shows a certain imaginativeness and gen- eral disposition to discursive argumentation somewhat different from the typical high scorer's mentality. It is thus the more striking to find that the political section of his interview is completely abstract and cliche-like. Just because this subject is by no means a fanatic, his statements serve well to illustrate how ignorance is covered up by phraseology, and how the stereo- types, borrowed from the vernacular of current newspaper editorials, make for the acceptance of reactionary trends. In order to give a concrete picture of how this mechanism works, his political statements are given in full. This
may also supply us with an example of how the various topics with which we shall have to deal in detail afterwards form a kind of ideological unit once a person is under the sway of political semi-information:
(Political trends? ) "I am not very happy by the outward aspect of things, too much politics instead of a basis of equality and justice for all men. Running of the entire country is determined by the party in power, not very optimistic outlook. Under Roosevelt, the people were willing to turn entire schedule of living over to the government, wanted everything done for them. (Main problem? ) No question but the problem of placing our servicemen back into employment, giving them a degree of happiness is a major problem. If not handled soon, may produce a serious danger. More firm organization of servicemen. "
(What might do? ) "Boycott the politicians and establish the old-time govern- ment that we should have had all along. (What is this? ) Government of, by, and for the people. " Subject emphasizes the moderate, average man is the serviceman. (Unions? ) "Not satisfied with them. One characteristic is especially unsatisfactory. Theory is wonderful and would hate to see them abolished, but too much tendency to level all men, all standards of workmanship and effort by equalizing pay. Other objection is not enough democratic attitude by the membership, generally con- trolled by minority group. " Subject emphasizes the compulsion imposed upon men to join but not to participate with the results of ignorant union leaders. He empha- sizes the need to raise the standards of voting by members and to require rotation of office and high qualifications for officers. He compares these adversely with business leaders.
(Government control? ) "There is too much tendency to level everything, doesn't give man opportunity to excel. " Subject emphasizes the mediocrity of government
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 667
workers, pay is insufficient to. attract the best calibre of men and no incentive
plans, etc.
(Threats to present government? ) "Probably most dangerous threat to our
government today, and that also applies to union org~nization, and life in general, 1s disinterest, the tendency to let the other fellow do 1t on the part of great num- bers of people so that things go on the way a few selfish men determine. "
The decisive twist is achieved by jumping from the very abstract idea of "equality and justice for all men" to the equally formalistic condemnation of "running the country by the party in power"-which happens to be the party of the New Deal. The vague cliche of an all-comprising democracy serves as an instrument against any specific democratic contents. It should not be overlooked, however, that some of his statements on unions-where he has some experience-make sense.
M122sa, a medium scorer who has been eighteen months at sea and is strongly interested in engineering, is a good example of stereotypy in politics employed by otherwise moderate people, and of its intimate relationship to ignorance. To this man one of the greatest political problems today is "the unions. " Describing them, he applies indiscriminately and without entering into the matter three current cliches-that of the social danger, that of gov- ernment interference, and that of the luxurious life of union leaders-simply by repeating certain formulae without caring much about their interconnec- tion or their consistency:
"For one thing they have too much power. Cross between the socialistic part of the union and the government . . . seems to go to the other extreme. Government inv:estigation . . . (subject seems rather confused in his ideas here). The unions . . . socialistic form in there. I know, I belonged to a few unions. They get up there and then call you brother and then drive off in a Cadillac. . . . Nine times out of ten the heads of the unions don't know anything of the trade. It's a good racket . . . "
Most of his subsequent answers are closely in line with a general pattern of reactionism, formulated mostly in terms of "I don't believe in it" without discussing the issue itself. The following passages may suffice as an illus- tration.
($zs,ooo limit on salaries? ) "I don't believe in that. "
(Most dangerous threats to present form of government? ) "I believe it's in the government itself. Too many powers of its own. "
(What ought to be done? ) "Going to have to solve a lot of other problems first. Get goods back on the market. "
(\Vhat about this conflict. between Russia on the one hand and England and this country on the other? ) "I don't particularly care for Russia and I don't particularly
'care for England. "
In this case, cli. ches are manifestly used in order to cover up lack of infor- mation. It is as if each question to which he does not know any specific answer conjures up the carry-overs of innumerable press slogans which he repeats in order to demonstrate that he is one of those who do not like to be
? 668 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
told and do like to think. Underlying is only a rigid pattern of yeas and nays.
He is aware of how a man of his general political outlook should react to each political issue but he is not aware of the issues themselves. He therefore supplements his plus and minus marks by phrases which more often than not are mere gaucheries.
F z39 belongs to the type which is to be characterized in Chapter XIX as "rigid low. " Her most outstanding trait is her violent hatred of alcohol- which suggests deeper-lying "high" trends. Liquors are her Jews, as it were. She regards herself as a Christian Socialist and solves most problems not by discussing them but referring to what the religious socialist should think.
The break between her opinions and any kind of substantial experience is evidenced by the following statement:
"My favorite world statesman is Litvinov. I think the most dramatic speech of modern times is the one he made at the Geneva Conference when he pleaded for collective security. It has made us very happy to see the fog of ignorance and distrust surrounding the Soviet Union clearing away during this war. Things are not settled yet, though. There are many fascists in this country who would fight Roosevelt if they could. "
She has a ready-made formula for the problem of nonviolence in interna- tional affairs:
"Of course, I am an internationalist. Would I be a true Christian if I weren't? And I have always been a pacifist. Wars are completely unnecessary. This one was. That is, it could have been avoided if the democratic people had recognized their own interest early enough and taken the proper steps. But they did not. And now we ask ourselves: would the interests of the people of the world be advanced by a fascist victory? Obviously they would not. So we must support this war com- pletely because we are faced with a clear choice and cannot avoid it. "
She offers a clear example of the association of stereotypy and personaliza- tion. Whereas her political persuasion should induce her to think in objective socioeconomic terms, she actually thinks in terms of favorite people, prefer- ably famous ones, of humans who are public institutions as it were-of "human stereotypes. "
"My second favorite world statesman is our own President although, perhaps, I should say Mrs. Roosevelt. I don't think he would have been anything without her. She really made him what he is. I believe the Roosevelts have a very sincere interest in people and their welfare. There is one thing that bothers me about them though- specially Mrs. Roosevelt-that is-liquor. She is not against it and it seems to me she should know how much we would be improved as a people without it. "
She exhibits a significant characteristic of the low scorers' political stereo- typy: a kind of mechanical belief in the triumph of progress, the counterpart to the high scorers' frequent references to impending doom which is also a keynote of the above-quoted political statements of M359?
"All one has to do is look backward to feel optimistic. I would not be a true
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Christian if I did not believe that man's progre~s is upward. W e are so much farther along than we were a century ago. Social legislation that was only a dream is an accomplished fact. "
b. ExAMPLES OF PERSONALIZATION. The tendency towards personalization feeds on the American tradition of personal democracy as expressed most strikingly by the power delegated to the executive branch of the government by our Constitution, and also on that aspect of traditional American liberalism which regards competition as a contest between men, where the better man is likely to conquer. Cause and effect seem to be somewhat reversed: whereas in market economy the supposedly "better man" is defined by competitive success, people have come to think that success falls to the better man. Con- sistent with this is the highly personalized character of political propaganda, particularly in electioneering where the objective issues at stake are mostly hidden behind the exaltation of the individuals involved, often in categories which have but very little to do with the functions those individuals are supposed to fulfill. The ideal of a democracy, where the people have their immediate say, is frequently misused under conditions of today's mass so- ciety, as an ideology which covers up the omnipotence of objective social tendencies and, more specifically, the control exercised by the party machines.
The material on personalization is both abundant and monotonous. A few examples may suffice.
The low-scoring man, Mzz6, prefers Wallace to Dewey because
"Wallace is the better man and I usually vote for the better man. "
Here personalization is the more striking since these two figures are actually defined by objectively antagonistic platforms, whereas it is more than doubt- ful whether the interviewee, or, for that matter, the great majority of the American people, is in any position to say what they are like "as men. "
The high-scoring man, M 102, employs almost literally the same expression as Mzz6:
". . . put down D~mocratic, but I never thought much about the party. I don't vote for the party but for the best man. "
Professed belief in political theories is no antidote for personalization. Mz 17, another "low" man, regards himself as a "scientific socialist" and is full of confidence in sociological psychology. But when asked about American
? parties, he comes out with the following statement:
"I don't know about that. I'm only interested in the man and his abilities. I don't care what party he belongs to. (What man do you like? ) F. D. R. is one of the greatest. I did not like him when he was elected but I admit I was wrong. He did a marvelous job. He was concerned with the benefit of the country. Truman is doing a good job so far. The senators and congressmen are run-of-the-mill. Dewey
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
is outstanding, I think; he has potentialities. He is apparently sincere and honest and concerned with the whole country. He did a good job as District Attorney. "
More aspects of personalization will be described when our interviewees' attitudes towards Roosevelt are under consideration. Here, we content our- selves with suggesting two qualities which seem to play a great role in the personalization complex and which recur regularly in our high scorers' statements about Dewey: Honesty and Sincerity.
F114, a high-scoring woman, knows that Dewey "is strong, young, cour- ageous, honest. He may have faults, but they're useful faults. I felt he was a strong, young person. " Obviously, this statement is linked to the adulation of strength that plays so large a role in the psychology of our high scorers
(cf. Chapter VII). The honesty of the former D. A. is derived from his much- advertised drive against political racketeering and corruption. He is sup- posed to be honest because he has exterminated, according to his propa- gandist build-up, the dishonest. Honesty seems largely to be a rationalization for vindictiveness. Speaking psychologically, the image of Dewey is a projec- tion of the punitive superego, or rather one of those collective images which replace the superego in an externalized, rigid form. The praise of his honesty, together with the repeated emphasis on his strength and youth, fall within the "strong man" pattern.
Fu7, another high scorer, of the Professional Women group, has a maximal score on A-S and is generally extremely conservative. Her similarly personalized appraisal of Dewey strikes a slightly different note but fits within the same pattern: ?
She feels that Dewey knows the value of money better than Roosevelt, because he came from a family that did not have too much.
The punitiveness behind the praise of the honest man shows itself in this example as hatred against comfortable living, against the "snobbish upper class" who supposedly enjoy the things which one has to deny to oneself. Dewey, per contra, is the symbol of one's own frustrations and is uncon- sciously, i. e. , sadomasochistically, expected to perpetuate frustration. What he seems to stand for within the minds of the high-scoring subjects is a state of affairs in which everybody has "learned the value of a dollar. " Identifica- tion with him is easy because as a prospective President he has the halo of power whereas his frugality is that of the middle-class subject herself.
Perhaps it is not accidental that infatuation with honesty is particularly frequent among women. They see life from the consumer's side; they do not want to be cheated, and therefore the noisy promise of honesty has some appeal to them.
As to the differentiation between high and low scorers with regard to per- sonalization, an impression may tentatively be formulated which is hard to substantiate but consistent with our clinical findings. The element of per-
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 67 I
sonalization that counts most heavily with the low scorers seems to be con- fidence, the idea that public figures are good, friendly fathers who take care of one, or of the "underdog. " It seems to be derived from an actual life relationship to one's parents, from unblocked positive transference. This observation will be given relief when the attitude of our subjects towards Roosevelt is discussed. Conversely, the personal trait most appreciated by the high scorer seems to be strength. Social power and control, the ultimate focus of their identification, is translated by the personalization mechanism into a quality inherent in certain individuals. The symbols of the powers that be are drawn from the imagery of a stern father to whom one "looks up. "
One last aspect of personalization may be mentioned. To know something about a person helps one to seem "informed" without actually going into the matter: it is easier to talk about names than about issues, while at the same time the names are recognized identification marks for all current topics. Thus, spurious eersonalization is an ideal behavior pattern for the semi- erudite, a device somewhere in the middle between complete ignorance and that kind of "knowledge" which is being promoted by mass communica- tion and industrialized culture.
To sum up: ever more anonymous and opaque social processes make it in- creasingly difficult to integrate the limited sphere of one's personal life experi- ence with objective social dynamics. Social alienation is hidden by a surface phenomenon in which the very opposite is being stressed: personalization of political attitudes and habits offers compensation for the dehumanization of the social sphere which is at the bottom of most of today's grievances. As less and less actually depends on individual spontaneity in our political and social organization, the more people are likely to cling to the idea that the man is everything and to seek a substitute for their own social impotence in the supposed omnipotence of great personalities.
3. SURFACE IDEOLOGY AND REAL OPINION
The alienation between the political sphere and the life experience of the individual, which the latter often tries to master by psychologically deter- mined intellectual makeshifts such as stereotypy and personalization, some- times results in a gap between what the subject professes to think about poli- tics and economy and what he really thinks. His "official" ideology conforms to what he supposes he has to think; his real ideas are an expression of his more immediate personal needs as well as of his psychological urges. The "official" ideology pertains to the objectified, alienated sphere of the political,
'the "real opinion" to the subject's own sphere, and the contradiction between the two expresses their irreconcilability.
Since this formal structure of political thinking has an immediate bearing upon one of the key phenomena of susceptibility to fascism, namely upon pseudoconservatism, it may be appropriate to offer a few examples here.
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
Fzz6, a prejudiced woman of the University Extension Group, offers an example of a conflict between surface ideology and real attitude through her somewhat deviate pattern of scale scores: she is middle on E and F but low on PEC. In her case, the deeper determinants are doubtless potentially fascist as evidenced particularly by her strong racial prejudice against both Negroes and Jews. In other political issues the picture is highly ambivalent. Charac- teristically, she classes herself as a Democrat, but voted for Willkie and then for Dewey. She "wasn't against Roosevelt," but her statement that "no man is indispensable" thinly veils her underlying hostility. She
"knew what Hoover stood for, and I had no use for him. But that didn't mean I had to worship Roosevelt. He was a good man, but when I heard people weeping and wailing over his death, I was just disgusted. As though he were indispensable. "
The amazing irregularity is an emphatically pro-Russian statement and an outspokenly antifascist attitude in international politics:
"Now, I am a great admirer of Russia. Perhaps I shouldn't say it out loud, but I am. I think they are really trying to do something for all the people. Of course there was a lot of suffering and bloodshed but think of what they had to struggle against. My husband really gets disturbed about this. He says I ought to go to Russia if I like communism so much. He says that to admire communism is to want a change and he thinks it is very wrong for me to even sound as though I wanted any change when we have enough and are comfortable and are getting along all right. I tell him that is very selfish and also that some people under the Czar might have felt that way but when the situation got so bad there was a revolution they got wiped out too. (American Communists? ) Well, I couldn't say because I don't really know anything about them.
"I don't hold the United States blameless. I think we have lots of faults. We talk now as though we had always hated war and tried to stop this one. That isn't true. There were ways to stop this war if they had wanted to. I remember when Mus- solini moved on Ethiopia. I always think of that as the real beginning of this war. And we were not interested in stopping that. My husband doesn't like me to criti- cize the United States. "
The frequent interspersion of this statement with reference to disagreements with her husband, from whom she is "very much different politically" and with whom she has "terrible arguments" leads us to assume that her "progres- sive" political views in areas apparently not highly affect-laden by her are rationalizations of her strong resentment of the man of whom she says "I don't think we can live for ourselves alone. " One is tempted to hypothesize that she wants him to get mad at her when she speaks in favor of Russia. In her case, the broad-mindedness and rationality of surface opinion seems to be conditioned by strong underlying, repressed irrationalities:
Interviewer did not have much success with very personal data. She turned aside questions that came close to her deeper feelings. There was no depth to the discus- sion of her husband.
When it comes, however, to political topics which, for some reason unex-
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plored in the interview, really mean something to this subject, she forgets all about her own rationality and gives vent to her vindictiveness though with a bad conscience, as evidenced by her previously quoted statement (Chap-
ter XVI) that "she is not very proud of her anti-Semitic bias. "
Mpo, of the University Extension Testing Class, is a low-scoring man, hesitant, apologetic, shy, and unaggressive. He wants to become a landscape architect. His political views are consciously liberal and definitely nonpreju- diced. He struggles to maintain his liberalism continuously, but this is not easy for him wi\:h regard to certain political matters, his impulses in many instances disavowing what he states. He begins with the typical low scorer's
statement:
"I am afraid I don't have as many ideas about politics and government as I should, but I think-a lot of people are more liberal now than they have been recendy. Possibly some like the change that is taking place in England-I don't know. "
He first takes a mildly antistrike attitude:
"I don't know, I cannot see that, as just a straight demand, without taking into consideration the company and its ties and all that. I have not read much about that but . . . in a large company . . . maybe they might be able to take it, all right, but in little shops . . . and if it did go through, and even if it did not have disastrous (effects) on business closing . . . price rises would make it come out even anyway. I guess I am really not in favor of strikes but I can see it just about. . . . "
Then he talks himself into a more definite stand against strikes, introduced by the still democratic "getting together" formula.
"They ought to get together and give, maybe, a 20 per cent or 30 per cent raise, then maybe kinda split it . . . and these strikes . . . just start at the wrong end . . . because if the strike is setded . . . they still have to come to some sort of agreement . . . and it's gonna be forced and men'll be driven . . . I guess human nature just is not that way but. . . ? "
The last statement, rather confused, actually belongs to the high-scorer pat- tern concerning the inhert badness of human nature (cf. Chapter VII).
