No More Learning

He went to church with his family every- Sunday and he would "fall on my knees in the street" to pray for something. At the age of 19 he changed. He became disgusted by the gossip in church. They would tell him things about someone that were "none of their damned business. " Also these people would come and testify in church and do bad things again. He could not understand this inconsistency in their actions.
In this case the anti-religious attitude, as far as it goes, is overtly derived from resentment against outside interference with individual liberty and this, be it noted, is hardly less an element in American ideology than is Christianity itself. Here, as in many other respects, individual, psychological ambivalence toward religion on the part of the subject reflects objective antagonism in our culture.
Mpo, a genuine liberal, offers another example of the rebellious feature in irreligiousness. The subject, who rejects Christian tradition altogether, is the child of religious parents. He admits no open conflict with them, al- though relations with them were apparently very cool. In all probability he displaced his rebellion against the family upon their religion, thus avoiding the trouble of undergoing difficulties of a more personal kind. Often enough, strong ideological attachments or oppositions can be understood as such dis- placements of family conflicts, a device which allows the individual to express his hostilities on a level of rationalization and so dispense with the necessity of deep emotional entanglements-and which also allows the youngster to remain within the family shelter. It may also be in some respects mon; grati- fying to attack the infinite father than to attack the finite one. It should be emphasized, however, that the term rationalization does not imply, here or elsewhere, the allegation untrue. Rationalization is a psychological aspect of thinking which by itself decides neither truth nor untruth. A decision on this matter depends entirely on the objective merits of the idea in which the
process of rationalization terminates.
In contrast to those irreligious low scorers who underwent a "negative"
conversion are easy-going low scorers such as M711. His negative attitude toward religion is marked not so much by opposition as by an indifference that involves the element of a somewhat humorous self-reflection. This sub- ject professes rather frankly a certain confusion in religious matters but in a way which suggests that his apparent weakness is allowed to manifest itself on the basis of some considerable underlying strength of character. With people like him it is as if they could afford to profess intellectual inconsist- encies because they find more security in their own character structure and in the depth of their experience than in clear-cut, well-organized, highly ra- tionalized convictions. When asked about his attitude toward religion, he answers:
? RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 741
"I don't really have any (laughs). More or less an absence of views. On organized religion I suppose I am confused (laughs) if anything. "
He does not need to reject religion because he is not under its spell; there are no traces of ambivalence, and therefore no signs of hatred, but rather a kind of humane and detached understanding. The religious idea he accepts is tolerance, in a characteristically nonconventional way demonstrated by his choice of negative expressions rather than high sounding "ideals. " "I think I became aware of intolerance. " But he does not use this awareness for ego enhancement but is rather inclined to attribute his religious emancipation to external accidental factors:
"If I'd stayed in Denver, I'd probably attended a church. I don't know. I don't think of it; I don't feel the need of organized religion particularly. "
Interesting is this subject's discussion of prayer. He admits the psychological efficacy of prayer, but is aware that this "therapeutic" aspect of religion is incompatible with the idea of religion itself. He regards prayer as a kind of al;ltosuggestion, which could "accomplish results" but "I certainly don't see there is anyone on the receiving end. "
This subject makes the bizarre but strangely profound statement:
"My religious curiosity did not last very long. Probably took up photography (laughs) about that time. "
Only an interpretation making full use of psychoanalytic categories would do justice to this sentence. The link between his early interest in religion and the later one in photography is apparently curiosity, the desire to "see" things-a sublimation of voyeurism. It is as if photography in a somewhat infantile way would fulfill the wish for "imagery" which underlies certain trends in religion and is at the same time put under a heavy taboo by both Judaism and Protestantism. This may be corroborated by the fact that the subject during his religious phase was attracted by theosophy, by religious ways of thinking which promised to "lift the curtain. "
It should be noted that this subject's attitude toward atheism is no more "radical" than is his opposition to religion. 5 He says:
"Well, I don't think any more about atheists than anything else. As a matter of fact I talked with several people who profess to be atheists and they don't even seem to agree. Perhaps I am an atheist (laughs) . . . you get into semantics, really. Professional atheists . . . just impress me as doing it because it seems to be a stunt. Don Quixote battling windmills. "
This may be indicative of the easy-going person's suspicion of the "ticket,"
5 The "easy-going" low scorer is rarely radical in any respect. This, however, does not make him a middle-of-the-roader. He is persistently aware of the nonidentity between concept and reality. He is fundamentally nontotalitarian. This is behind his specific idea of tolerance.
? 742
THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
his awareness of the tendency of any rigid formula to degenerate into a mere piece of propaganda. 6
Incidentally, the subject senses clearly what was formulated one hundred years ago in Baudelaire's Diary: that atheism becomes obsolescent in a world the objective spirit of which is essentially areligious. The meaning of atheism undergoes historical changes. What was one of the decisive impulses of the eighteenth century Enlightenment may function today as a manifestation of provincial sectarianism or even as a paranoid system. Half-mad Nazis such as Mathilde Ludendorff fought, besides the Jews and the Free Masons, the Roman-Catholics as an ultra-n10ntan conspiracy directed against Germany, transforming the tradition of Bismarck's Kulturkampf into a pattern of per- secution mania.
4. RELIGIOUS LOW SCORERS
A clear-cut example of a religious low scorer is the somewhat sketchy inter- view of Fz32, a young woman brought up in India where her parents are missionaries. Her combining positive Christianity with an outspoken concrete idea of tolerance ("equality for everyone") is derived from "life experience with the Indians. " She is passionate in matters of racial understanding. How- ever, her church affiliations make it impossible for her to draw the political consequences from her tolerance idea:
"I don't like Ghandi. I don't like radical people. He is a radical. He has done much to upset and disunite the country. "
Her association with the church involves an element of that religious con- ventionalism which is usually associated with ethnocentrism. In spite of her? closeness to the church and to theological doctrine, her religious outlook has a practical coloring.
"It (religion) means a great deal. It makes a person happier-more satisfied. Gives them peace of mind. You know where you stand and have something to work for- an example to follow. Hope for an after-life. Yes, I believe in immortality. "7
This girl is probably atypical in many ways because of her colonial upbring- ing as well as because of the mixture of "official" religiosity and more spon-
6 More material on this subject is presented in Chapter XIX.
7 It would be a tempting task to analyze the change of meaning undergone by the word ? "belief. " It illustrates most clearly religious neutralization. Formerly the idea of belief was emphatically related to the religious dogma. Today it is applied to practically everything which a subject feels the right to have as his own, as his "opinion" (for everybody is en- titled to have opinion) without subjecting it to any criteria of objective truth. The secular- ization of "believing" is accompanied by arbitrariness of that which one believes: it is moulded after the preferences for one or the other commodity and has little relation to the idea of truth. ("I don't believe in parking," said a conventional high-scoring girl in her interview. ) This use of belief is almost an equivalent of the hackneyed, "I like it," which is about to lose any meaning. (Cf. the statement of Mack, given in Chapter II, "I like the
history and sayings of Christ. ")
? RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL
743
taneous religious humanism. Her particular attitude is probably due, on the surface level at least, to her insight into ingroup-outgroup problems. How- ever, this example seems to offer some support for the hypothesis that only fully conscious, very articulate, unconventional Christians are likely to be free of ethnocentrism. At any rate, the rareness of religious low scorers in our sample is significant. As indicated above, the composition of the sample itself may be responsible for this. However, this rarity suggests something more fundamental. The tendency of our society to become split into "pro- gressive" and "status quo" camps may be accompanied by a tendency of all persons who cling to religion, as a part of the status quo, also to assume other features of the status quo ideology which are associated with the ethnocen- tric outlook. Whether this is true or whether religion can produce effective trends in opposition to prejudice, could be elucidated only after much exten- sive research.
? CHAPTER XIX TYPES AND SYNDROMES
T. W. Adorno
A. THE APPROACH
Hardly any concept in contemporary American psychology has been so thoroughly criticized as that of typology. Since "any doctrine of types is a halfway approach to the problem of individuality, and nothing more," (9) any such doctrine is subject to devastating attacks from both extremes: be- cause it never catches the unique, and because its generalizations are not statistically valid and do not even afford productive heuristic tools. From the viewpoint of general dynamic theory of personality, it is objected that typol- ogies tend towards pigeonholing and transform highly flexible traits into
static, quasi-biological' characteristics while neglecting, above all, the impact of historical and social factors. Statistically, the insufficiency of twofold typologies is particularly emphasized. As to the heuristic value of typologies, their overlapping, and the necessity of constructing "mixed types" which practically disavow the original constructs, is pointed out. At the hub of all these arguments is aversion against the application of rigid concepts to the supposedly fluid reality of psychological life.
The development of modern psychological typologies, as contrasted, for example, with the old scheme of "temperaments," has its origin in psychiatry, in the therapeutic need for a classification of mental diseases as a means of facilitating diagnosis and prognosis. Kraepelin and Lombroso are the fathers of psychiatric typology. Since the clear-cut division of mental diseases has in the meantime completely broken down, the basis of typological classifications of the "normal," derived from the former, seems to vanish. It is stigmatized as a remnant of the "taxonomic phase of behavior theory" the formulation
of which "tended to remain descriptive, static and sterile" (So). If not even the mentally diseased, whose psychological dynamics are largely replaced by rigid patterns, can be sensibly divided according to types, how, then, is there any chance of success for procedures such as the famous one of Kretsch- mer, the raison d'etre of which was the standard classification of manic- depression and dementia praecox?
744
? TYPES AND SYNDROMES
745
The present state of the discussion on typology is summed up by Anne Anastasi (I I) as follows:
"Type theories have been most commonly criticized because of their attempt to classify individuals into sharply divided categories. . . . Such a procedure implies a multi-modal distribution of traits. The introverts, for example, would be expected to cluster at one end of the scale, the extroverts at the other end, and the point of demarcation between them should be clearly apparent. Actual measurement, how- ever, reveals a unimodal distribution of all traits, which closely resembles the bell- shaped normal curve.
"Similarly, it is often difficult to classify a given individual definitely into one type or the other. The typologists, when confronted with this difficulty, have frequently proposed intermediate or 'mixed' types to bridge the gap between the extremes. Thus Jung suggested an ambivert type which manifests neither introvert nor extrovert tendencies to a predominant degree. Observation seems to show, however, that the ambivert category is the largest, and the decided introverts and extroverts are relatively rare. The reader is referred, for example, to the distribution curve obtained by Heidbreder with an introversion questionnaire administered to zoo college students. . . . It will be recalled that the majority of scores were inter- mediate and that as the extremes of either introversion or extroversion were ap- proached, the number of cases became progressively smaller. The curve, too, showed no sharp breaks, but only a continuous gradation from the mean to the two extremes. As was indicated in Chapter II, the same may be said of all other measurable traits of the individual, whether social, emotional, intellectual, or physical.
"It is apparent, then, that insofar as type theories imply the classification of indi- viduals into clear-cut classes, they are untenable in the face of a mass of indisputable data. Such an assumption, however, is not necessarily inherent in all systems of human typology. It is more characteristic of the popular versions and adaptations of type theories than of the original concepts. To be sure, type psychologists have often attempted to categorize individuals, but this was not an indispensable part of their theories; their concepts have occasionally been sufficiently modified to admit of a normal distribution of traits. "
In spite of such concessions to more satisfactory categorizations, the "nom- inalistic" exclusion of typological classifications has triumphed to such a degree that it is almost tantamount to a taboo, no matter how urgent the scientific and pragmatic need for such classifications may be. It should be noted that this taboo is closely related to the notion, still taught by numerous academic psychiatrists, that mental diseases are essentially inexplicable. If one would assume, for the argument's sake, that psychoanalytic theory has really succeeded in establishing a number of dynamic schemata of psychoses, by which the latter become "meaningful" within the psychological life of
the individual in spite of all their irrationality and the disintegration of the psychotic personality, the problem of typology would be completely redefined.
It cannot be doubted that the critique of psychological types expresses a truly humane impulse, directed against that kind of subsumption of individ- uals under pre-established classes which has been consummated in Nazi
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
Germany, where the labeling of live human beings, independently of their specific qualities, resulted in decisions about their life and death. It is this motive which has been stressed particularly by Allport (9); and Boder has demonstrated in great detail in his study of "Nazi Science" the interconnec- tions of psychological pro et contra schemes, the repressive function of categories such as Jaensch's "Gegentypus" and the arbitrary manipulation of empirical findings (47). Thus, enquiries devoted to the study of preju- dice have to be particularly cautious when the issue of typology comes up. To express it pointedly, the rigidity of constructing types is itself indicative of that "stereopathic" mentality which belongs to the basic constituents of the potentially fascist character. We need only to refer, in this connection, to our high scorer of Irish descent who attributes his personal traits unhesi- tatingly to his national extraction. Jaensch's "anti-type," for example, is an almost classic case of the mechanism of projection, the effectiveness of which in the make-up of our high scorers has been established, and which in Jaensch's has wormed its way into the very same science whose task it would be to account for this mechanism. The essentially undynamic, "antisociological," and quasi-biological nature of classifications of the Jaensch brand is directly opposed to the theory of our work as well as to its empirical results. 1
Yet all these objections do not dispose altogether of the problem of typol- ogy. Not all typologies are devices for dividing the world into sheep and buck, but some of them reflect certain experiences which, though hard to systema- tize, have, to put it as loosely as possible, hit upon something. Here one has to think primarily of Kretschmer, Jung, and Freud. It should be particularly emphasized that Freud, whose general emphasis on psychological dynamics puts him above the suspicion of any simple "biologism" and stereotypical thinking, published as late as 1931 (39) a rather categorical typology with- out bothering much about the methodological difficulties of which he must have been aware very well, and even, with apparent naivete, constructing "mixed" types out of the basic ones. Freud was too much led by concrete
1 It should be remembered that Jaensch's anti-type is defined by synaesthesia, that is to say, the supposed or actual tendency of certain people "to have color experiences when listening to a tone, or to music in general, and to have tone experiences when looking at colors or pictures" (Boder, in (47), p. 15). This tendency is interpreted by Jaensch as a symptom of degeneracy. It may well be assumed that this interpretation is based on his- torical reminiscence rather than on any factual psychological findings. For the cult of synaesthesia played a large role within the lyrical poetry of the same French authors who introduced the concept of decadence, particularly Baudelaire. It can be noted, however, that synaesthetic imagery fulfills a specific function in their works. By clouding the division between different realms of sense perception, they simultaneously try to efface the rigid classification of different kinds of objects, as it is brought about under the practical requirements of industrial civilization. They rebel against reification. It is highly characteristic that an entirely administrative ideology chooses as its archfoe an attitude which is, above all, rebellion against stereotypy. The Nazi cannot stand anything which does not fit into his scheme and even less anything which does not recognize his own reified, "stereopathic" way of looking at things.
? TYPES AND SYNDROMES
747
insights into the matters themselves, had too intimate a relationship to his scientific objects, to waste his energy on the kind of methodological reflec- tions which may well turn out to be acts of sabotage of organized science against productive thinking. This is not to say that his typology has to be accepted as it stands. Not only can it be criticized by the usual antitypological arguments to which reference was made at the beginning of this chapter; as Otto Fenichel has pointed out, it is also problematic from the viewpoint of orthodox psychoanalytic theory. What counts, however, is that Freud found such a classification worthwhile. One has only to look at the relatively easy and convincing integration of different kinds of twofold typologies in Donald W. MacKinnon's Structure of Personality (in 55) to gain the impression that typologies are not altogether arbitrary, do not necessarily do violence to the manifoldness of the human, but have some basis in the structure of psycho-
logical reality.
The reason for the persistent plausibility of the typological approach, how-
ever, is not a static biological one, but just the opposite: dynamic and social. The fact that human society has been up to now divided into classes affects more than the external relations of men. The marks of social repression are left within the individual soul. The French sociologist Durkheim in particular has shown how and to what extent hierarchical social orders permeate the individual's thinking, attitudes, and behavior. People form psychological "classes," inasmuch as they are stamped by variegated social processes. This in all probability holds good for our own standardized mass culture to even higher a degree than for previous periods. The relative rigidity of our high scorers, and of some of our low scorers, reflects psychologically the increas- ing rigidity according to which our society falls into two more or less crude opposing camps. Individualism, opposed to inhuman pigeonholing, may ulti- mately become a mere ideological veil in a society which actually is inhuman and whose intrinsic tendency towards the "subsumption" of everything shows itself by the classification of people themselves. In other words, the critique of typology should not neglect the fact that large numbers of people are no longer, or rather never were, "individuals" in the sense of traditional nine- teenth-century philosophy. Ticket thinking is possible only because the actual existence of those who indulge in it is largely determined by "tickets," standardized, opaque, and overpowering social processes which leave to the "individual" but little freedom for action and true individuation. Thus the problem of typology is put on a different basis. There is reason to look for psychological types because the world in which we live is typed and "pro- duces" different "types" of persons. Only by identifying stereotypical traits
in modern humans, and not by denying their existence, can the pernicious tendency towards all-pervasive classification and subsumption be challenged. The construction of psychological types does not merely imply an arbi- trary, compulsive attempt to bring some "order" into the confusing diversity
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
of human personality. It represents a means of "conceptualizing" this diver- sity, according to its own structure, of achieving closer understanding. Thf radical renunciation of all generalizations beyond those pertaining to thf most obvious findings would not result in true empathy into human individ- uals but rather in an opaque, dull description of psychological "facts": every step which goes beyond the factual and aims at psychological meaning-a~ it has been defined in Freud's basic statement that all our experiences aH meaningful ("dass aile unsere Erlebnisse einen Sinn haben")-inevitably in- volves generalizations transcending the supposedly unique "case," and it happens that these generalizations more frequently than not imply the exist- ence of certain regularly recurring nuclei or syndromes which come rather close to the idea of "types. " Ideas such as those of orality, or of the compul- sive character, though apparently derived from highly individualized studies, make sense only if they are accompanied by the implicit assumption that the structures thus named, and discovered within the individual dynamics of an individual, pertain to such basic constellations that they may be expected to be representative, no matter how "unique" the observations upon which they are based may be. Since there is a typological element inherent in any kind of psychological theory, it would be spurious to exclude typology per se. Methodological "purity" in this respect would be tantamount to renouncing the conceptual medium or any theoretical penetration of the given material, and would result in an irrationality as complete as the arbitrary subsumptive- ness of the "pigeonholing" schools.
Within the context of our study, another reflection of an entirely different nature points in the same direction. It is a pragmatic one: the necessity that science provide weapons against the potential threat of the fascist mentality. It is an open question whether and to what extent the fascist danger really can be fought with psychological weapons. Psychological "treatment" of prejudiced persons is problematic because of their large number as well as because they are by no means "ill," in the usual sense, and, as we have seen, at least on the surface level are often even better "adjusted" than the non- prejudiced ones. Since, however, modern fascism is inconceivable without a mass basis, the inner complexion of its prospective followers still maintains its crucial significance, and no defense which does not take into account the subjective phase of the problem would be truly "realistic. " It is obvious that psychological countermeasures, in view of the extent of the fascist potential among modern masses, are promising only if they are differentiated in such a way that they are adapted to specific groups. An over-all defense would move on a level of such vague generalities that it would in all probability fall flat. It may be regarded as one of the practical results of our study that such a differentiation has at least to be also one which follows psychological lines, since certain basic variables of the fascist character persist relatively inde- pendently of marked social differentiations. There is no psychological defense against prejudice which is not oriented toward certain psychological "types. "
?
TYPES AND SYNDROMES
749
We would make a fetish of the methodological critique of typology and jeopardize each attempt of coming psychologically to grips with prejudiced persons if a number of very drastic and extreme differences-such as the one between the psychological make-up of a conventional anti-Semite and a sado- masochistic "tough guy"-were excluded simply because none of these types is ever represented in classic purity by a single individual.
The possibility of constructing largely different sets of psychological types has been widely recognized. As the result of the previous discussions, we base our own attempt on the three following major criteria:
a. We do not want to classify human beings by types which divide them neatly statistically, nor by ideal types in the usual sense which have to be supplemented by "mixtures. " Our types are justified only if we succeed in organizing, under the name of each type, a number of traits and dispositions, in bringing them into a context which shows some unity of meaning in those traits. We regard those types as being scientifically most productive which integrate traits, otherwise dispersed, into meaningful continuities and bring to the fore the interconnection of elements which belong together according to their inherent "logic," in terms of psychological understanding of under- lying dynamics. No mere additive or mechanical subsumption of traits under the same type should be permitted. A major criterion for this postulate would be that, confronted with "genuine" types, even so-called deviations would no longer appear as accidental but would be recognizable as meaningful, in a structural sense. Speaking genetically, the consistency of meaning of each type would suggest that as many traits as possible can be deduced from cer- tain basic forms of underlying psychological conflicts, and their resolutions.
b. Our typology has to be a critical typology in the sense that it compre- hends the typification of men itself as a social function. The more rigid a type, the more deeply does he show the hallmarks of social rubber stamps. This is in accordance with the characterization of our high scorers by traits such as rigidity and stereotypical thinking. Here lies the ultimate principle of our whole typology. Its major dichotomy lies in the question of whether a person is standardized himself and thinks in a standardized way, or whether he is truly "individualized" and opposes standardization in the sphere of human experience. The individual types will be specific configurations with- in this general division. The latter differentiates prima facie between high and low scorers. At closer view, however, it also affects the low scorers themselves: the more they are "typified" themselves, the more they express unwittingly the fascist potential within themselves. 2
2 It should be stressed that two concepts of types have to be distinguished. On the one hand, there are those who are types in the proper sense, typified persons, individuals who are largely reflecting set patterns and social mechanisms, and on the other hand, persons who can be called types only in a formal-logical sense and who often may be characterized just by the absence of standard qualities. It is essential to distinguish the real, "genuine" type structure of a person and his merely belonging to a logical class by which he is defined from outside, as it were.
? 75: Tho type? m~::. :":? ~:;:,thoy m? y hocomo l productive pragmatically, that is to say, that they can be translated into rela- i tively drastic defense patterns which are organized in such a way that dif- ~ ferences of a more individual nature play but a minor role. This makes for ~
a certain conscious "superficiality" of typification, comparable to the situa- 1 tion in a sanatorium where no therapy could ever be initiated if one did not divide the patients into manic-depressives, schizophrenics, paranoiacs, and
so forth, though one is fully aware of the fact that these distinctions are likely to vanish the deeper one goes. In this connection, however, the hypoth-
esis may be allowed that if one could only succeed in going deep enough, at the end of the differentiation just the more universal "crude" structure would reappear: some basic libidinous constellations. An analogy from the history of the arts may be permitted. The traditional, crude distinction between Romanesque and Gothic style was based on the characteristic of round and pointed arches. It became apparent that this division was insufficient; that both traits were overlapping and that there were much deeper-lying contrasts of construction between the two styles. This, however, led to such compli- cated definitions that it proved impossible to state in their terms whether a given building was Romanesque or Gothic in character though its structural totality rarely left any doubt to the observer to which epoch it belonged.
Thus it ultimately became necessary to resume the primitive and naive classi- fication. Something similar may be advisable in the case of our problem. An apparently superficial question such as "What kind of people do you find among the prejudiced? " may easily do more justice to typological require- ments than the attempt to define types at first sight by, say, different fixations at pregenital or genital developmental phases and the like. This indispensable simplification can probably be achieved by the integration of sociological criteria into the psychological constructs. Such sociological criteria may refer to the group memberships and identifications of our subjects as well as to social aims, attitudes, and patterns of behavior. The task of relating psychological type criteria to sociological ones is facilitated because it has been established in the course of our study that a number of "clinical" cate- gories (such as the adulation of a punitive father) are intimately related to social attitudes (such as belief in authority for authority's sake). Hence, we may well "translate" for the hypothetical purposes of a typology a number of our basic psychological concepts into sociological ones most closely akin to them.
These considerations have to be supplemented by a requirement prescribed by the nature of our study. Our typology, or rather, scheme of syndromes, has to be organized in such a way that it fits as "naturally" as possible our empirical data. It should be borne in mind that our material does not exist in an empty space, as it were, but that it is structurally predetermined by our tools, particularly the questionnaire and the interview schedule. Since
? TYPES AND SYNDROMES 75 1
our hypotheses were formulated according to psychoanalytic theory, the orientation of our syndromes toward psychoanalytic concepts is reinforced. Of course, the limitations of such an attempt are narrow since we did not "analyze" any of our subjects. Our characterization of syndromes has to concentrate on traits that have proved to be psychoanalytically significant rather than on the ultimate dynamic patterns of depth psychology.
In order to place the following typological draft into its proper perspec- tive, it should be recalled that we have pointed out in the chapter on the F scale that all the clusters of which this scale is made up belong to one single, "over-all" syndrome. It is one of the outstanding findings of the study that "highness" is essentially one syndrome, distinguishable from a variety of "low" syndromes. There exists something like "the" potentially fascist char- acter, which is by itself a "structural unit. " In other words, traits such as conventionality, authoritarian submissiveness and aggressiveness, projectiv- ity, manipulativeness, etc. , regularly go together. Hence, the "subsyndromes" which we outline here are not intended to isolate any of these traits. They are all to be understood within the general frame of reference of the high scorer. What differentiates them is the emphasis on one or another of the features or dynamics selected for characterization, not their exclusiveness. However, it seems to us that the differential profiles arising within the over- all structure can readily be distinguished. At the same time, their interconnec- tion by the over-all potentially fascist structure is of such a nature that they are "dynamic" in the sense that transitions from one to the other could easily be worked out by analyzing the increase or decrease of some of the specific factors. Such a dynamic interpretation of them could achieve more ade- quately-that is to say, with a better understanding of the underlying proc- esses-what is usually done in a haphazard way by the "mixed types" of static typologies. However, theory and empirical substantiation of these dynamic relations among the syndromes could not be touched upon within the present research.
The principle according to which the syndromes are organized is their "type-being" in the sense of rigidity, lack of cathexis, stereopathy. This does not necessarily imply, however, that the order of our syndromes represents a more dynamic "scale of measurement. " It pertains to potentialities, and accessibility to countermeasures, but not to overt prejudice-basically to the problem of "over-all highness" vs. "lowness. " It will be seen, for example, that the case illustrating the psychologically relatively harmless syndrome at the bottom of our scheme is extremely high in terms of overt antiminority prejudice.
Pragmatic requirements as well as the idea that the high scorers are gener- ally more "typed" than the low scorers seem to focus our interest on the prejudiced person. Yet, we deem it necessary also to construct syndromes of low scorers. The general direction of our research leads us to stress, with
? 752
THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
a certain one-sidedness, psychological determinants. This, however, should never make us forget that prejudice is by no means an entirely psychological, "subjective" phenomenon. It has to be remembered what we pointed out in Chapter XVII: that "high" ideology and mentality are largely fomented by the objective spirit of our society. Whereas different individuals react differ- ently, according to their psychological make-up, to the ubiquitous cultural stimuli of prejudice, the objective element of prejudice cannot be neglected if we want to understand the attitudes of individuals or psychological groups. It is therefore not sufficient to ask, "Why is this or that individual ethno- centric? " but rather: "Why does he react positively to the omnipresent stimuli, to which this other man reacts negatively? " The potentially fascist character has to be regarded as a product of interaction between the cultural climate of prejudice and the "psychological" responses to this climate. The former consists not only of crude outside factors, such as economic and social conditions, but of opinions, ideas, attitudes, and behavior which appear to be the individual's but which have originated neither in his autonomous thinking nor in his self-sufficient psychological development but are due to his belonging to our culture. These objective patterns are so pervasive in their influence that it is just as much of a problem to explain why an individual resists them as it is to explain why they are accepted; In other words, the low scorers present just as much of a psychological problem as do the high scorers, and only by understanding them can we obtain a picture of the objective momentum of prejudice. Thus the construction of "low" syndromes becomes imperative. Naturally, they have been chosen in such a way as to fit as well as possible with our general principles of organization. Yet it should not come as a surprise that they are more loosely interconnected than the "high" ones.
The syndromes to be discussed have been developed gradually. They go back to a typology of anti-Semites worked out and published by the Institute of Social Research (57). This scheme was modified and extended to the low scorers during the present research. In its new form, which emphasized the more psychological aspects, it was applied particularly to the Los Angeles sample; the interviewers here tried as far as possible to ascertain the relation between their case findings and the hypothetical types. The syndromes which are presented here are the result of the modifications which this draft under- went on the basis of our empirical findings, and of continuous theoretical
critique. Still, they have to be regarded as tentative, as an intermediate step between theory and empirical data. For further research, they need redefini- tion in terms of quantifiable criteria. The justification of presenting them now lies in the fact that they may serve as guides for this future research. Each syndrome is illustrated by a profile of one characteristic case, mainly on the basis of the interview protocol of each person selected.
? TYPES AND SYNDROMES
753
B. SYNDROMES FOUND AMONG HIGH SCORERS
A rough characterization of the several types may precede their detailed presentation. Surface Resentment can easily be recognized in terms of justi- fied or unjustified social anxieties; our construct does not say anything about the psychological fixations or defense mechanisms underlying the pattern of opinion. With the Conventional pattern, of course, acceptance of conven- tional values is outstanding. The superego was never firmly established and the individual is largely under the sway of its external representatives. The most obvious underlying motive is the fear of "being different. " The Author- itarian type is governed by the superego and has continuously to contend with strong and highly ambivalent id tendencies. He is driven by the fear of being weak. In the Tough Guy the repressed id tendencies gain the upper hand, but in a stunted and destructive form. Both the Crank and the Manipu- lative types seem to have resolved the Oedipus complex through a narcissistic withdrawal into their inner selves. Their relation to the outer world, how- ever, varies. The cranks have largely replaced outward reality by an imag- inary inner world; concomitantly, their main characteristic is projectivity and their main fear is that the inner world will be "contaminated" by contact with dreaded reality: they are beset by heavy taboos, in Freud's language by the de/ire de toucher. " The manipulative individual avoids the danger? of psychosis by reducing outer reality to a mere object of action: thus he is
incapable of any positive cathexis. He is even more compulsive than the authoritarian, and his compulsiveness seems to be completely ego-alien: he did not achieve the transformation of an externally coercive power into a superego. Complete rejection of any urge to love is his most outstanding defense.
In our sample, the conventional and the authoritarian types seem to be by far the most frequent.
I. SURFACE RESENTMENT
The phenomenon to be discussed here is not on the same logical level as the various "types" of high and low scorers characterized afterwards. As a matter of fact, it is not in and of itself a psychological "type," but rather a condensation of the more rational, either conscious or preconscious, mani- festations of prejudice, in so far as they can be distinguished from more deep- lying, unconscious aspects. We may say that there are a number of people who "belong together" in terms of more or less rational motivations, whereas the remainder of our "high" syndromes are characterized by the relative absence or spuriousness of rational motivation which, in their case, has to be recognized as a mere "rationalization. " This does not mean, however, that those high scorers whose prejudiced statements show a certain rationality
? 754
THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
per se are exempt from the psychological mechanisms of the fascist character. Thus the example we offer is high not only on the F scale but on all scales: she has the generality of prejudiced outlook which we have taken as evidence that underlying personality trends were the ultimate determinants. Still, we feel that the phenomenon of "Surface Resentment," though generally nour- ished by deeper instinctual sources, should not be entirely neglected in our discussion since it represents a sociological aspect of our problem which might be underestimated in its importance for the fascist potential if we concentrate entirely on psychological description and etiology.
We refer here to people who accept stereotypes of prejudice from outside, as ready-made formulae, as it were, in order to rationalize and-psychologi~ cally or actually-overcome overt difficulties of their own existence. While their personalities are unquestionably those of high scorers, the stereotype of prejudice as such does not appear to be too much libidinized, and it gener~ ally maintains a certain rational or pseudorationallevel. There is no complete break between their experience and their prejudice: both are often explicitly contrasted one with the other. These subjects are able to present relatively sensible reasons for their prejudice, and are accessible to rational argumenta- tion. Here belongs the discontented, grumbling family father who is happy if somebody else can be blamed for his own economic failures, and even happier if he can derive material advantages from antiminority discrimina- tion, or the actually or potentially "vanquished competitors," such as small retailers, economically endangered by chain stores, which they suppose to be owned by Jews. We may also think of anti-Semitic Negroes in Harlem who have to pay excessive rents to Jewish collectors. But these people are spread over all those sectors of economic life where one has to feel the pinch of the process of concentration without seeing through its mechanism, while at the same time still maintaining one's economic function.
5043, a housewife with extremely high scores on the scales who "had often been heard discussing the Jews in the neighborhood," but is "a very friendly, middle-aged" person who "enjoys harmless gossip," expressed high respect for science and takes a serious though somewhat repressed interest in paint- ing. She "has fears about economic competition from zootsuiters" and "the interview revealed that similar attitudes are strongly held about Negroes. " She "has experienced quite a severe comedown in terms of status and eco- nomic security since her youth. Her father was an extremely wealthy ranch owner. "
Although her husband was making a good living as a stock broker when she married him in 1927, the stockmarket crash and the ensuing depression made it necessary for her to grapple with economic problems, and finally it even became necessary for them to move in with her wealthy mother-in-law. This situation has caused some friction while at the same time relieving her of a great deal of respon- sibility. In general, the subject seems to identify herself with the upper middle-class,
? TYPES AND SYNDROMES
755
thus striking a balance betwe~n her upper-class background and her present pre- carious middle-class position. Although she does not admit this into her ego, the loss of money and status must have been very painful to her; and her strong preju- dice against Jews infiltrating the neighborhood may be directly related to her fear of sinking "lower" on the economic scale.
The consistently high scores of this subject are explained by the interviewer on the basis of a "generally uncritical attitude" (she always "agrees very much" on the questionnaire) rather than by an active, fascist bias, which does not come out in the interview. Characteristic is the relative absence of serious family conflicts.
She was never severely disciplined; on the contrary, both parents tended to give in to her wishes and she was ostensibly their favorite. . . . There was never any serious friction and, continuing through the present, the relationship among the siblings and the family in general is still very close.
The reason why she was chosen as a representative of "Surface Resent- ment" is her attitude in race questions. She "shows a very strong prejudice towards all minority groups" and "regards the Jews as a problem," her stere- otypes following "pretty much the traditional pattern" which she has taken over mechanically from outside. But "she does not feel
that all Jews necessarily exhibit all the characteristics. Also she does not believe that they can be distinguished by looks or any special characteristics, except that they are loud and often aggressive.
The last quotation shows that she does not regard those features of the Jews which she incriminates as inborn and natural. Neither rigid projection nor destructive punitiveness is involved:
With regard to the Jews she feels that assimilation and education will eventually solve the problem.
Her aggressiveness is evidently directed against those who might, as she fears, "take something away from her," either economically or in status, but the Jews are no "countertype. "
Hostility is openly expressed toward the Jews who have been moving into the neighborhood as well as toward those Jews who she believes "run the movies. " She seems to fear the extension of their influence and strongly resents the "infiltration" of Jews from Europe.
She also expresses the above-mentioned differentiation between "outside" stereotypy and concrete experiences, thus keeping the door open for a miti- gation of her prejudice, though, according to the interviewer, if a fascist wave should arise, "it seems likely that she would display more hostility and quite possibly accept fascist ideology":
Experiences with Jews have been limited to more or less impersonal contacts with only one or two closer acquaintances, whom she describes as "fine people. "
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
It may be added that if there is any truth in the popular "scapegoat theory" of anti-Semitism, it applies to people of her kind. Their "blind spots" are at least partly to be attributed to the narrow, "petty bourgeois" limitations of experience and explanation on which they have to draw. They see the Jew as the executor of tendencies actually inherent in the total economic process, and they put the blame upon him. It is a postulate necessary for the equilib- rium of their ego that they must find some "guilt" responsible for their precarious social situation: otherwise the just order of the world would be disturbed. In all probability, they primarily seek this guilt within themselves and regard themselves, preconsciously, as "failures. " The Jews relieve them superficially of this guilt feeling. Anti-Semitism offers them the gratification of being "good" and blameless and of putting the onus on some visible and highly personalized entity. This mechanism has been institutionalized. Per- sons such as our case 5043 probably never had negative experiences with Jews, but simply adopt the externally pronounced judgment because of the benefit they draw from it.
2. THE "CONVENTIONAL" SYNDROME
This syndrome represents stereotypy which comes from outside, but which has been integrated within the personality as part and parcel of a general conformity. In women there is special emphasis on neatness and femininity, in men upon being a "regular" he-man. Acceptance of prevailing standards is more important than is discontent. Thinking in terms of ingroup and outgroup prevails. Prejudice apparently does not fulfill a decisive func- tion within the psychological household of the individuals, but is only a means of facile identification with the group to which they belong or to which they wish to belong. They are prejudiced in the specific sense of the term: taking over current judgments of others without having looked into the matter themselves. Their prejudice is a "matter of course," possibly "preconscious," and not even known to the subjects themselves. It may become articulate only under certain conditions. There is a certain antagonism between prej- udice and experience; their prejudice is not "rational" inasmuch as it is little related to their own worries but at the same time, at least on the surface, it is not particularly outspoken, on account of a characteristic absence of violent impulses, due to wholesale acceptance of the values of civilization and "decency. " Although this syndrome includes the "well-bred anti-Semite," it is by no means confined to upper social strata.
An illustration of the latter contention, and of the syndrome as a whole, is 5057, a 3o-year-old welder, "extremely charming in manner," whose case is summarized by the interviewer as follows:
He presents a personality and attitudinal configuration encountered rather fre- quently among skilled workers, and is neither vicious nor exploitive, but instead
? TYPES AND SYNDROMES
757
merely reflects the prejudices of his own ingroup in the fashion of the "Conven- tional" anti-Semite.
His acceptance of his own situation as well as his underlying concern with status is evidenced by the description of his occupational attitude:
The subject likes his work very much. He expressed. absolutely no reservations about his present job. It was clear from the outset that he sees himself as a skilled craftsman, and finds in welding a chance for creative and constructive activity. He did say that one limitation is that welding is certainly not a "white-collar" job; it is physically dirty and carries with it some hazards. His satisfaction with his present work is further corroborated by his questionnaire statement that if he were not restricted in any way his occupation would be in the same line of work, perhaps on the slightly higher level of welding engineer.
His professional outlook is optimistic in a realistic way, with no indications of insecurity. His conventionalism is set against "extremes" in every respect: thus he
selected Christian Science because "it is a quieter religion than most . . . religion should restrain you from overindulgences of any kind, such as drinking, gambling, or anything to excess. " . . . He has not broken away from his grandparents' teach- ings and hasn't ever questioned his religious beliefs.
Most characteristic of the subject's over-all attitude are the following data from his questionnaire:
Replying to the projective question, "What moods or feelings are the most un- pleasant or disturbing to you? " the subject mentioned "disorder in my home or surroundings" and "the destruction of property. " The impulse which he finds hard to control is "telling people what is wrong with them. " In answering the question, "What might drive a person nuts? " he said, "Worry-A person should be able to control their mind as well as their body. "
With regard to ethnocentrism he is, in spite of his general moderateness and seeming "broad-mindedness," in the high quartile. The specific color of his antiminority attitude is provided by his special emphasis upon the ingroup- outgroup dichotomy: he does not have, or does not like to have, "contacts" with the outgroup, and at the same time he projects upon them his own ingroup pattern and emphasizes their "clannishness. " His hostility is miti- gated by his general conformity and his expressed value for "our form of government. " However, a certain rigidity of his conventional pattern is discernible in his belief in the unchangeability of the traits of the outgroup. When he experiences individuals who deviate from the pattern, he feels uneasy and seems to enter a conflict situation which tends to reinforce his hostility rather than to mitigate it. His most intense prejudice is directed against the Negroes, apparently because here the demarcation line between in- and outgroup is most drastic.
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY Concerning other minorities his remarks are as follows:
The biggest minority problem right now, according to the subject, is that of the Japanese-Americans "because they are coming back. " Subject feels they should be "restricted in some way and their parents deported. " As for their traits: "I have had no personal contact with them except in school where they always seemed to be good students.