What about
personality
traits?
Adorno-T-Authoritarian-Personality-Harper-Bros-1950
.
I more learned it since I have been on my own.
" Asked what he was like as a child, his answer is moralistically empty of personal content: He was "just a working boy .
.
.
never in no trouble.
"
Eugene, like Robert, was "pretty good up to the time I was about 17 years old-never in trouble, never smoked or drank. " He sees no connection be- tween his submission to self-suppressive "goodness" in childhood and youth and his long history of "trouble" since then. He "can't explain" his violent "temper" or frequent drunken "benders. " Concerning his gambling, he declares mystically that "I haven't got that in my blood. "
Clarence, too, describes himself in childhood as "a good boy" who "didn't run wild" but "started to work" at a very early age. Not only does he deny any causal connection between this moralistic childhood self-suppression and his later avoidance of work (by probably "wrongly drawing government
22 Wilbur's parents separated when he was an infant, and he never knew either of them. He was raised by an uncle and an aunt.
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compensation for years") and attacks on little girls; his panic makes him deny, by means of paranoid delusions, that he ever exhibited such behavior. In Ronald's case the splitting off of crucial aspects of childhood is more equivocal. For instance, he does criticize the severity of childhood disci- pline by his father: "They say, 'Spare the rod and spoil the child,' but I don't think it worked out in my case. " It is shown in the next section, how- ever, that Ronald is unable to carry through this criticism in a principled way but only in a paranoid-victimization context and by capricious rebellion.
2. FASCISTS
The fascist inmates reveal a similar "split" between childhood and later personality. Adrian shows some "break-through" of childhood conflicts in what sounds at times like the beginnings of insight. But this is negated by lack of emotional realization and by failure to accept responsibility for his own personality. Instead he feels only cynical, ego-alien self-contempt, with no real interest in changing what he despises in himself. Thus, Adrian ob- serves at one point that "my selfishness is something I can almost blame (my father) for. His attitude and that of the whole family led me to believe that I was . . . the whole universe. " In a later discussion, the cynical nature of this superficial "insight" is clearer: "All I want to know is how to put the best into this life. I should say get the best out, not put in, since I am selfish. " Adrian's "explanation" for parental "influence" on deeper impulses behind his symptoms is mystically hereditarian: "If I ever did anything wrong, it was the Latin in me, which is the side I have more of an affinity for-my mother's side: I look more like them. "
Floyd also avoids identifying with his own personality development as a life-experience process. Instead, he adopts hereditarian explanations: "All the inheritance is from the male side of the family for some reason or other. Except for my industriousness . . . that just doesn't exist. ? . . I guess I just got that from the other side of the family. "
Buck, when questioned rather persistently by the examiner as to what he was like as a child, just "doesn't know. " Asked which of his parents had the most influence on his personality, he becomes very defensive, assuming falsely that the examiner must be moralizing about his delinquencies. Ignoring the examiner's efforts to correct this misunderstanding, he persists in his own obsessive moralism: Both parents, he protests, "always tried to teach me the right thing"; being in prison is "not my folks' fault. "
3. LOW SCORERS
More characteristic of the "low" interviewees, with whatever partial in- hibitions, is a generaf',readiness to accept the causal continuity between present emotional problems and childhood emotional conflicts with parents. This has been previously exemplified in Art's self-interpretation of the effect
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of his dependence toward his mother upon his marriages and upon his de- linquence. Similarly, Don volunteers that "in prison this is the first time that I haven't been beset by all sorts of emotional problems" centering around "my mother and father. " No such striking single quotations are available for Jim and Dick, although the "inner continuity" of their lives is implicit in some of the discussion of parents, to be presented shortly.
H. ATTITUDES TO PARENTS
1. HIGH SCORERS
Certain critical aspects of the prejudiced inmates' ideology-"racial," po- litico-economic, and moral-religious-have been explained as attempts to deny personal dispositions by displacing them onto things outside. Their ideology seems to express fearful oversubmissiveness to authority and power, "antiweakness" fac;ades, and displaced hatred of imaginary power figures (e. g. , Jews); as well as desperate fear of their own impulses, especially sexual aggression toward "respected white women. " These men's unconscious, split-off anxieties may in turn be traced to deeper sources, namely fear- ridden attitudes to parents. 23 All of them reveal, above all, a loss of inner integrity by self-negating oversubmissiveness-out-of-fear to parental author- ity. Such an attitude is shown especially toward the parent who is regarded as "stronger," typically the father. This submission is betrayed by a striking inability to criticize parents' basic values; by inhibitions against making principled criticisms of parental harshness; by acceptance of suppression imposed by parents; and by stereotypic overidealization of parents. The last feature seems to be an anxious attempt to suppress hostility by showing the opposite-awed "respect. " The false quality of this "respect" is revealed by its empty cliches, referring mostly to external stereotypes such as the parents' status, the "sacrifices" they made for the family, etc. Positive feelings tend to be oriented not toward "lovable" personal qualities of parents but rather toward what parents have "done" for them, or "given" to them; i. e. , they reflect an exploitative dependence-for-external-things. Self-negating submis- sion and dependence toward parents may well be the ultimate origin of that "weakne~s" in themselves which these men so frantically try to deny. But fear prevents their resentment from leading to real self-assertion or to inde- pendence of their parents or other established authority. Sometimes they express feelings of victimization toward parents and other authorities (recall Ronald's "persecutor for a governor"). But these feelings are overpersonal- ized: the prejudiced men cannot really criticize antidemocraticness as such; instead, they feel themselves singled out-as individuals, as "the poor people" or
23 The statistical comparison of high- and low-scoring interviewees generally, with respect to attitudes toward parents, is reported in Chapter X.
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whatnot-for "persecution. " Their furtive resentment of parents and other authorities can be expressed only in pseudo rebellion, often delinquent or fascist; and in prejudice against mythically "dominant" groups such as Jews, who symbolize the hated parental power and values-i. e. , by "growling" de- fiantly while expressing the very authoritarianism "growled" against. There are signs that, to bolster their weakened masculinity and independence, these men have tried to identify with the external aspects of the resented parents-i. e. , parental authoritarianism, status and power, especially that of the father. This involves, not solidly internalized character traits, but only vicarious participation as a "lieutenant" in the parent-leader's strength. This narcissistic identification is also a way of disguising masochistic sub- missiveness to the parent-leader.
A further consequence of the prejudiced inmates' submission to parents is splitting-off of sexual impulses toward the first heterosexual figure, the mother. These are kept split off by developing reverence for the mother's imagined asexual "purity. " By emphasizing the mother's "sweetness" and "goodness," she is in fantasy deprived of sexuality. Such distortions help to protect these men against their own feared sexual impulses, and provide a basis for their later inability to fuse love and sex. Their fear of Negroes' approach to "white women" may well be a projection of their own repressed impulses toward the mother.
Several questionnaire items indirectly reflect submissiveness to parental authority and denial of any hostility to family figures. These include an overemphasis on "obedience and respect for authority" (Item I), rejection of "rebellious ideas" (Item 2I), condemnation of those who do not feel "love, gratitude, and respect" for parents (Item 27), and rejection of any hostile impulses toward "a close friend or relative" (Item 42). While these items are differentiating, even the low quartile means on them are rather high. It may be suspected that prison has stirred up considerable guilt over rebellion and hostility, in both low and high scorers.
Robert's submissiveness is underlined by his insistent repetition that he was "a perfect son to my parents, a perfect brother to my sisters and brothers. " His mother is the "most terrific person in the world to me," and he is quite unable to evaluate her objectively: "I truthfully can't say she has any definite shortcomings. " Yet his conception of her is empty and distant. Probing as to what sort of person she is draws a complete blank, except for references to her antisexual moralism (about "woman" as "the most perfect thing") and her "self-sacrificing" gratification of dependence: "I think she has devoted her life to making her mate (my father) and her children very happy. Has never taken much interest in outside social affairs; is concerned with her fam- ily. " Even this "devotion" is regarded with mixed feelings: "I don't really think she has any (shortcomings)-except maybe too wound up in her home and didn't take more interest in social affairs. " Robert overidealizes his father
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in an equally empty way as "very good-1 couldn't ask for a better father. '' He then proceeds furtively to "undo" this praise by expressions of feeling victimized: "He was a little strict at times," and "I haven't had everything I might have wanted from him. " (Note the dependence-for-things. ) "I would have liked to have a nicer home, better position. " His underlying submission, however, impels him to pull back and "apologize": "Possibly at the time I couldn't realize" the reasons for punishment, and "all in all, I was very happy to be one of his boys. " Most interesting are Robert's comments about his father's economic status: "Not a successful businessman. . . . Instead of im- proving himself, I think he went down a bit. . . . Since I got out of school, he's always worked for wages. " Thinking of the family's frequent moves which deeply upset his mother, Robert has "often tried in later years to analyze my father's wanderlust. " Robert decided that in moving so often, his father was "apparently seeking business success. " In this respect, "My mother," who "always referred to me as her best daughter" because "I've al- ways tried to do everything to make her happy"-(note the submissive feminine identification)-"has remarked that I'm just the opposite of him. " According to Robert, his mother in no way criticized the father's obsession with external status; she objected only that he did not "stay put" in seeking it and was not "successful" enough. But this seems to have provided a ra- tionale for Robert, while submitting to his father's notion of economic "suc- cess" as the end-all of existence, to assert: "To me, looking back now, he's not the type of a man that I want to pattern my business after. " Robert's ambiv- alent ego-ideal of "business success" is, so he likes to think, "the opposite" of his father's ideal. This might help to explain the inversion of his anti-Semitism, in which he expresses mainly envy of Jewish "drive and ambition to get there," with only furtive signs of his hostility against "the Jew. " "The Jew" perhaps symbolizes less his father directly than it does a superficially differ- ing father-ideal toward which Robert's resentment is even more repressed than toward his actual father. This father-ideal is difficult for him to rebel against even by way of displaced resentment against the symbol of "the Jew," because under moralistic pressure from his mother he is deceived into think- ing that his submission to this ideal is itself an assertion of independence from his father's values.
Ronald's resentment has broken through more openly. After the divorce of his parents when he was 3, he lived with his (paternal) grandmother. He was "taught . . . that ( my mother) had deserted my father and brother and 1. " Upon his father's remarriage, Ronald went, at the age of 7, to live with his father and stepmother. From the beginning there seemed to be "a mutual understanding between my brother and myself that we didn't like her. " Her position as only a secondary mother figure seemed to enable Ronald to express resentments toward her directly. His stepmother, he says, "didn't take any interest at all" and "resented us": "We always felt that we were in the
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way. " A hint of possible homosexual fixation on the father is suggested by jealousy that his father "was more interested in her than in me or my brother. " Ronald expresses much disappointment in the father, and feelings of being victimized by him: The father "was dependable, but he changed"; "worked his way up . . . then drinking caused him to go down. " "He never shirked at the idea of anyone helping him, especially financially. . . . I know he used some of my grandmother's money to buy real estate with. And I know he lost it, and it didn't seem to bother him. " The father gave Ronald an allowance of only fifteen cents a week, which Ronald still resents: "I'll never forget that. " For the most part, however, he blames his stepmother for being "never satis- fied" and "greedy. " Even he. re, his guilt makes him pull back, as if sensing that he may be projecting onto her some of his own feelings: "I thought she was greedy. 'Course it might have been for other reasons-wanting to save something. " Most striking is his almost complete displacement of hate for the father's harsh discipline, onto the stepmother. Telling how his father "didn't believe in sparing the rod" and "laid it on pretty thick," he declares: "The hard part about it was that my stepmother would tell him that my brother or I had done things, and he wouldn't give us a chance to explain. " Ronald actually "ran off twice," but "it didn't cause me to hate him. I held it mostly against her. " (Just as Ronald now "holds it mostly against" those of lesser status and weak position, not those who represent real power. )
Wilbur's parents died in his infancy. He was raised by an aunt and uncle, with whom his main satisfactions, he says, were limited to "board and room, a place to sleep. " The aunt was a "good woman" (i. e. , "pure"). Specifically, she gratified Wilbur's dependency-for-things; she was "good to the children: clothed, fed, took care of us when sick. " "I couldn't think of any" faults in her, except perhaps that "she would never like to go no place-stayed at home all the time" (like the woman Wilbur later chose to marry). He is unable to make his "idealization" of his aunt meaningful by any details; she was "just a good woman," "good to me. " He "never did" confide in her. Wilbur's monosyllabic answers to the examiner's inquiry indicate that his childhood was dominated by the harsh rule of his uncle, whose regime he was ap- parently too submissive to think of questioning. He says that his uncle whipped him several times a month: (Did you ever question whether he was right about it? ) "No. " The uncle, he declares, "treated me okay," but from a very early age "made me work pretty hard. (Q. ) Sun-up to sun-down. (Q. How did you take that? ) We did what the elders told us to. (Q. Did you ever question that? ) Well, I never questioned. " Wilbur was able to rebel only when he could create a persecutory rationale by 'feeling singled out: "Only one disagreement-he wanted me to do more work than his own children. " Wilbur reacted to this rationale with explosive defiance-still submissively unable to criticize his uncle's authoritarianism as such-by abruptly leaving home at the age of r5. With all this, Wilbur in another context describes
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8]9
his uncle as "pretty easy to get along with. " Then, in almost the next breath he n~veals that "he would stay away at night and drink, sometimes come home drunk. My aunt went off in a comer. " Wilbur indicates that he didn't dare to think seriously of criticizing the uncle or of protecting the aunt: (What was your reaction? ) "Didn't think much about it. "
Clarence, too, describes his (real) father as "easy to get along with. " What he admired most about the father was "the way he treated me. (Q. ) Never did abuse me or scold me. " Later, Clarence betrays the reason for his freedom from physical discipline, namely, his own cowed submission to stem parental authority. Although the father would "tell us what we should do, what he wanted us to do, and what he expected us to do," "there wasn't much (disci- pline) to exercise," simply because "we just did what they said. " A moment later, Clarence unwittingly reveals the parental intimidation that forced such utter submission from him: bemoaning the independence of children today, he declares that if he had ever answered his parents back the way he thinks children do now, "I wouldn't be able to sit down! " Clarence has justified his parents' intimidation of him by adopting the same general philosophy of authoritarianism: "Children didn't run wild in those days like they do nowadays. . . . If they have to whip them, I believe in whipping them. I don't believe in sparing the rod and spoiling the child. " This submissive acceptance of parental authoritarianism helps to explain Clarence's inability to evaluate his father objectively: he "didn't know (my father) had any weaknesses. " His description of his mother is equally superficial and moralistic: ''She was a nice, easy-going woman-good mother. " What he admired most about her, he states, was the "way she handled me-always tell me how good I was. " Clarence's distant, stereotyped attitude to his mother is further suggested by his purely physical conception of the way in which "I take after my mother more than my father. (Q. In what ways? ) Well, in my complexion.
(Q.
What about personality traits? ) That I couldn't answer. "
After Eugene's father "ran away when I was 2 years old," his mother went to work as a waitress and "took care of me all my life. " Thus she was both mother and father to Eugene. His remarks about her suggest the fear which forms the basis of his "idealizing" her-namely a desperate dependence on her to "do things" for him: (Note the similarity in phrasing with Eugene's submissive-dependent "idealization" of Roosevelt, who "did things" for Eugene via the C. C. C. ). "She's good. In fact, the best. In other words, she's just tops with me. . . . Does everything for me she can. Writes me all the time. (Q. What do you admire most about her? ) Just about everything. (Q. ) Well, I guess her being so good and friendly to everybody, especially me. (Q. What's an example? ) Well, always trying to do everything for me. Very seldom go uptown without bringing something back for me. (Q. What else? ) When Father went away, Mother took care of me all her life, where she could have put me in a home some place. She always stayed with me in
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trouble. " This dependence, this fear of loss of support, may have been a powerful force driving Eugene to submit to his mother's righteous re. Pres- sion. She is described as having taught him not values but absolutistic moral rules: "She always taught me the difference between right and wrong, the things I should do and shouldn't. " Her moralism, as he describes it, smoth- ered any chance of answering the implicit hostility behind it, because the hos- tility was veiled by a fog of self-righteousness: She would characteristically "just bawl us out" in a way that "made it seem like it was hurting her more than it did us. " "She'd look hurt," with the result that "it just hurt. I never sassed her back or said a mean t'hing. " The implied struggle to hold a desire to "sass her back" is illustrated further in a striking contradiction. The only thing Eugene can imagine that might have prevented his long record of "get- ting in trouble" is more strict moral repression by his mother: "To tell the truth, I don't think she was strict enough with us. " As evidence for this, he mentioned that he sometimes "came home later than I was supposed to. " A minute later, unaware of the contradiction, he declares: "She was pretty strict about that being home on time! " Eugene submitted to his mother's moralism by being "pretty good, up to the time I was r7 years old. " His subsequent "trouble"-gambling, drinking, fighting, and sexual promis- cuity-suggests a belated reaction against this submission. Meanwhile, the hostility which her "hurt" moralism made him suppress causes him to feel guilty and therefore obligated to "do things" for her. Asked what his main satisfactions were in the relationship with his mother, this guilt evokes the inappropriate response that "I guess I haven't made her very happy, but when I'm out there and going straight, I'll always take care of my mother. . . . I feel I've never treated her like I really should. "
2. FASCISTS
The 3 fascist men show, in more extreme form, essentially the same pat- tern of attitudes to parent figures as do the other prejudiced men. Es- pecially notable is their fearful submission to the father, in which homosexual aspects are hardly even disguised.
Buck verbalizes fairly directly his fear of sexuality in relation to his mother: "I'd kinda feel embarrassed if my mother ever brought up a subject like (sex). " His conception of her seems to be exclusively that of an agent to "do things" to gratify his dependence: "She was a hard-workin' lady, took care of us kids. " In fact, when asked what were his main satisfactions in his relationships with his parents, his response is limited to the purely external fact that "they gave me most anything I wanted. " As for his parents' per- sonalities, Buck's orientation toward the external leads him to ask: "You mean the people they associated with? " He cannot go beyond the most super- ficial references to their external roles, such as giving things to himself, being "hard-working" or a "businessman," "got drunk," "gave orders," etc.
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This inhibitory block against any personal relation to them is consistent with the absolute submission which his father forced upon him. Buck "never did see any weaknesses in him. " His blind acceptance of his father's "rightness" about everything explains why: His father, he protests repeatedly;was "gen- erally right when he says something," "always trying to show us the right view of things," "always right in the things he said. " Buck "always figured I had it comin'" when he was "licked," and in his fright "knew right from wrong right away" as an absolute distinction never to be questioned. Hence his father usually needed only to "give us one look and we'd know what he meant. " Buck's fear leads him to say that his parents "never argued . . . even when he (the father) got drunk. " A moment later he naively reveals the reason for the lack of arguments, with no apparent awareness of the contradiction: "Mother didn't say anything. " "If they did" have any disagreements, "they never did let us kids know. " This denial is followed a few sentences later by a description of how sometimes "Dad would go into a rage and walk away . . . and Mother would go into a room and cry; but she'd get over it right away. " Of particular interest, in connection with Buck's fantasy that "most all of them Jews talk about sex mostly . . . about they're gonna (have fellatio per- formed on them) tonight," are some remarks about the ways in which his father (symbolized by Jews? ) used to "talk about sex. " The only sex in- struction Buck had, he declares, consisted in his father's frequent warnings to "watch out for these ch__" in order not to be exploited. In another context he relates how his father began, during his middle 'teens, to give him money for the express purpose of visiting prostitutes. Whether truth or fantasy, this is highly suggestive. It is not difficult to imagine that Buck may have been sexually overstimulated, rather crudely, by his father.
After Floyd's parents separated in his infancy, he rarely saw either of them. Until he was 7 he was raised by a foster mother who boarded children. From age 7 to 14 he lived with his father and a newly acquired stepmother, until he was sent away to boarding school. Floyd describes himself as grossly neglected by the foster mother: "Those people always had something to do from dawn to dusk, and as a kid I never had anything to say. " He "didn't get along too well" with the other children. Discipline was "more corporeal than anything else . . . for any infraction of her so-called rules. " The stepmother he scornfully resented as "just another woman, I guess," "just somebody that was there," and as "mean" and rejective toward himself as "that other woman's child. " He jealously contrasts her with his father as different "in every way. She wasn't his equal in anything-intellectually. " This phrasing raises a sus- picion that Floyd wanted to replace his stepmother and adopt the same "lieu- tenant" role toward his father as he seems to have adopted toward his crime partner. Indirect evidence for this hypothesis is to be found in his "mixed-up loyalty" to his real mother, suggesting definite identification with her feminine role: "I wish she had a husband, and that's the pitiful part of it-a woman
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shouldn't be alone. " There is much further evidence of Floyd's intense, if am- bivalent homosexual father fixation. He describes his father as a "very, very fine man, intelligent, understanding. Excellent father . . . in every way . . . a man everybody in the community looked up to. " As to what he admires most about his father, he "couldn't singularize on that. Just all of him. " The one shortcoming which he can think of in his father is aggressive abruptness in criticizing: "Well, he was outspoken. . . . If he thought you were no good or doing something wrong, he didn't hesitate to tell you. " But Floyd's fear of his father compels him to justify even this: "That's as much of an asset in ways. " In fact, Floyd cannot mobilize sufficient aggression toward his father to make a single criticism of him, not even of the father's virtual abandon-? ment of him during the first seven years of his life: "Just always been away, that's all. " He denies that his father ever punished him unjustly. A significant reason for Floyd's anxious splitting-off from conscious awareness of all negative feelings toward his father may be similar to the preoccupation of Eugene toward his mother-fear of complete abandonment. This is suggested by Floyd's description of the quarrels between his father and stepmother. These were "very sharp, and their remarks were lasting and bitter, like, 'We never should have taken him home. ' And Father would be confused. . . . Then he would punish me, once very hard; then he would talk to me until I went to sleep. " This dependence, as well as further signs of homosexual at- tachment, would seem to be expressed in the following remarks: "There's only one help I've got, and that's my father"; although "he's never been close to me," he "has stood by me. . . . This affair has brought us closer to- gether than before"; and "he has written me a beautiful letter. "
Adrian's case reveals in rather pure form the dynamics of a power-ridden type of inverted Oedipus complex: fear-driven homosexual submission to a hated father, and underlying identification with the mother's role as sub- ordinate. His mother, who died in her early twenties when he was only 5, seems to have been a very infantile person with "no sense of humor. " She neglected Adrian entirely except for flaunting her sexuality in his face, and then terrifying him by her "way of punishing me. " She was "a very beautiful woman," "very vivacious," "came out in---society . . . spent most of her life going out to dinners. . . . She mostly ignored me, but she always came to show me how she looked before she went out. . . . Except that my nurse said
I was this or that, she didn't seem to know personally what I was about. " Her punishments, "usually for something petty" such as "stealing fudge off a shelf," were capricious and deeply traumatic: "She locked me in dark closets -scared me to death," or "threatened to give me to a neighborhood woman whom she said was a witch. " Yet the fearful dependence of a little child apparently forced Adrian to repress the hate such treatment must have ex- cited: for in the same breath in which he reveals her self-centered cruelty, he idealizes her and is unable to criticize her for these things. (How did
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you feel toward your mother when she punished you? ) "I loved my mother. I was very crazy about my mother. (Did your mother ever punish you un- justly? ) No. She lost her temper unjustly. She was very vacillating-up one minute and down the next; never knew what she was going to do next. Peo- ple just had to stay out of her way when she was that way. " Questioned about her weaknesses or faults, Adrian declares: "In my memory, she just doesn't have any faults. " His mother's intimidation alone might be thought to have discouraged Adrian's heterosexual development. But fear of a stern father appears to have combined with this to "stampede" Adrian into complete homosexual submission to the father and adoption of the mother's manipulative techniques. The father, who died several years ago, was a military officer who was "not the least bit demonstrative. . . . He dis- approved of any show of emotion of any kind. " Adrian was awed by "his consistency. " "He was a stickler for rules. . . . I thought of him as a sort of tyrant. " Yet, though he seemed "hard as nails with everyone else," he was "very easy with me," because "if my father punished me, (my mother) was so upset that it didn't go. " Adrian describes specific episodes that would seem to have encouraged a fearful "feminine" attitude toward the father: "In- cidentally, whenever she cried, I cried, too. . . . She ofteri threw tantrums, and father just put on his hat and went out, which only made her all the madder.
And I would always cry with her. . . . I always felt when he scolded her, he was scolding me. " Adrian indicates that from earliest infancy he adopted his mother's techniques for manipulating the father: "I hollered . . . usually got my way. In fact, all I ever had to do was cry about anything, and he'd do whatever it was that upset me. " "And remember," says Adrian in explaining his father's coddling him as the father coddled Adrian's mother, "that I look like my mother. " Note the continuing father fixation: "I missed him very much when I was at the boarding house. . . . When I was sick, I used to . . . daydream about his coming to see me. . . . I've saved all my letters to him. . . .
Eugene, like Robert, was "pretty good up to the time I was about 17 years old-never in trouble, never smoked or drank. " He sees no connection be- tween his submission to self-suppressive "goodness" in childhood and youth and his long history of "trouble" since then. He "can't explain" his violent "temper" or frequent drunken "benders. " Concerning his gambling, he declares mystically that "I haven't got that in my blood. "
Clarence, too, describes himself in childhood as "a good boy" who "didn't run wild" but "started to work" at a very early age. Not only does he deny any causal connection between this moralistic childhood self-suppression and his later avoidance of work (by probably "wrongly drawing government
22 Wilbur's parents separated when he was an infant, and he never knew either of them. He was raised by an uncle and an aunt.
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compensation for years") and attacks on little girls; his panic makes him deny, by means of paranoid delusions, that he ever exhibited such behavior. In Ronald's case the splitting off of crucial aspects of childhood is more equivocal. For instance, he does criticize the severity of childhood disci- pline by his father: "They say, 'Spare the rod and spoil the child,' but I don't think it worked out in my case. " It is shown in the next section, how- ever, that Ronald is unable to carry through this criticism in a principled way but only in a paranoid-victimization context and by capricious rebellion.
2. FASCISTS
The fascist inmates reveal a similar "split" between childhood and later personality. Adrian shows some "break-through" of childhood conflicts in what sounds at times like the beginnings of insight. But this is negated by lack of emotional realization and by failure to accept responsibility for his own personality. Instead he feels only cynical, ego-alien self-contempt, with no real interest in changing what he despises in himself. Thus, Adrian ob- serves at one point that "my selfishness is something I can almost blame (my father) for. His attitude and that of the whole family led me to believe that I was . . . the whole universe. " In a later discussion, the cynical nature of this superficial "insight" is clearer: "All I want to know is how to put the best into this life. I should say get the best out, not put in, since I am selfish. " Adrian's "explanation" for parental "influence" on deeper impulses behind his symptoms is mystically hereditarian: "If I ever did anything wrong, it was the Latin in me, which is the side I have more of an affinity for-my mother's side: I look more like them. "
Floyd also avoids identifying with his own personality development as a life-experience process. Instead, he adopts hereditarian explanations: "All the inheritance is from the male side of the family for some reason or other. Except for my industriousness . . . that just doesn't exist. ? . . I guess I just got that from the other side of the family. "
Buck, when questioned rather persistently by the examiner as to what he was like as a child, just "doesn't know. " Asked which of his parents had the most influence on his personality, he becomes very defensive, assuming falsely that the examiner must be moralizing about his delinquencies. Ignoring the examiner's efforts to correct this misunderstanding, he persists in his own obsessive moralism: Both parents, he protests, "always tried to teach me the right thing"; being in prison is "not my folks' fault. "
3. LOW SCORERS
More characteristic of the "low" interviewees, with whatever partial in- hibitions, is a generaf',readiness to accept the causal continuity between present emotional problems and childhood emotional conflicts with parents. This has been previously exemplified in Art's self-interpretation of the effect
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of his dependence toward his mother upon his marriages and upon his de- linquence. Similarly, Don volunteers that "in prison this is the first time that I haven't been beset by all sorts of emotional problems" centering around "my mother and father. " No such striking single quotations are available for Jim and Dick, although the "inner continuity" of their lives is implicit in some of the discussion of parents, to be presented shortly.
H. ATTITUDES TO PARENTS
1. HIGH SCORERS
Certain critical aspects of the prejudiced inmates' ideology-"racial," po- litico-economic, and moral-religious-have been explained as attempts to deny personal dispositions by displacing them onto things outside. Their ideology seems to express fearful oversubmissiveness to authority and power, "antiweakness" fac;ades, and displaced hatred of imaginary power figures (e. g. , Jews); as well as desperate fear of their own impulses, especially sexual aggression toward "respected white women. " These men's unconscious, split-off anxieties may in turn be traced to deeper sources, namely fear- ridden attitudes to parents. 23 All of them reveal, above all, a loss of inner integrity by self-negating oversubmissiveness-out-of-fear to parental author- ity. Such an attitude is shown especially toward the parent who is regarded as "stronger," typically the father. This submission is betrayed by a striking inability to criticize parents' basic values; by inhibitions against making principled criticisms of parental harshness; by acceptance of suppression imposed by parents; and by stereotypic overidealization of parents. The last feature seems to be an anxious attempt to suppress hostility by showing the opposite-awed "respect. " The false quality of this "respect" is revealed by its empty cliches, referring mostly to external stereotypes such as the parents' status, the "sacrifices" they made for the family, etc. Positive feelings tend to be oriented not toward "lovable" personal qualities of parents but rather toward what parents have "done" for them, or "given" to them; i. e. , they reflect an exploitative dependence-for-external-things. Self-negating submis- sion and dependence toward parents may well be the ultimate origin of that "weakne~s" in themselves which these men so frantically try to deny. But fear prevents their resentment from leading to real self-assertion or to inde- pendence of their parents or other established authority. Sometimes they express feelings of victimization toward parents and other authorities (recall Ronald's "persecutor for a governor"). But these feelings are overpersonal- ized: the prejudiced men cannot really criticize antidemocraticness as such; instead, they feel themselves singled out-as individuals, as "the poor people" or
23 The statistical comparison of high- and low-scoring interviewees generally, with respect to attitudes toward parents, is reported in Chapter X.
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whatnot-for "persecution. " Their furtive resentment of parents and other authorities can be expressed only in pseudo rebellion, often delinquent or fascist; and in prejudice against mythically "dominant" groups such as Jews, who symbolize the hated parental power and values-i. e. , by "growling" de- fiantly while expressing the very authoritarianism "growled" against. There are signs that, to bolster their weakened masculinity and independence, these men have tried to identify with the external aspects of the resented parents-i. e. , parental authoritarianism, status and power, especially that of the father. This involves, not solidly internalized character traits, but only vicarious participation as a "lieutenant" in the parent-leader's strength. This narcissistic identification is also a way of disguising masochistic sub- missiveness to the parent-leader.
A further consequence of the prejudiced inmates' submission to parents is splitting-off of sexual impulses toward the first heterosexual figure, the mother. These are kept split off by developing reverence for the mother's imagined asexual "purity. " By emphasizing the mother's "sweetness" and "goodness," she is in fantasy deprived of sexuality. Such distortions help to protect these men against their own feared sexual impulses, and provide a basis for their later inability to fuse love and sex. Their fear of Negroes' approach to "white women" may well be a projection of their own repressed impulses toward the mother.
Several questionnaire items indirectly reflect submissiveness to parental authority and denial of any hostility to family figures. These include an overemphasis on "obedience and respect for authority" (Item I), rejection of "rebellious ideas" (Item 2I), condemnation of those who do not feel "love, gratitude, and respect" for parents (Item 27), and rejection of any hostile impulses toward "a close friend or relative" (Item 42). While these items are differentiating, even the low quartile means on them are rather high. It may be suspected that prison has stirred up considerable guilt over rebellion and hostility, in both low and high scorers.
Robert's submissiveness is underlined by his insistent repetition that he was "a perfect son to my parents, a perfect brother to my sisters and brothers. " His mother is the "most terrific person in the world to me," and he is quite unable to evaluate her objectively: "I truthfully can't say she has any definite shortcomings. " Yet his conception of her is empty and distant. Probing as to what sort of person she is draws a complete blank, except for references to her antisexual moralism (about "woman" as "the most perfect thing") and her "self-sacrificing" gratification of dependence: "I think she has devoted her life to making her mate (my father) and her children very happy. Has never taken much interest in outside social affairs; is concerned with her fam- ily. " Even this "devotion" is regarded with mixed feelings: "I don't really think she has any (shortcomings)-except maybe too wound up in her home and didn't take more interest in social affairs. " Robert overidealizes his father
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in an equally empty way as "very good-1 couldn't ask for a better father. '' He then proceeds furtively to "undo" this praise by expressions of feeling victimized: "He was a little strict at times," and "I haven't had everything I might have wanted from him. " (Note the dependence-for-things. ) "I would have liked to have a nicer home, better position. " His underlying submission, however, impels him to pull back and "apologize": "Possibly at the time I couldn't realize" the reasons for punishment, and "all in all, I was very happy to be one of his boys. " Most interesting are Robert's comments about his father's economic status: "Not a successful businessman. . . . Instead of im- proving himself, I think he went down a bit. . . . Since I got out of school, he's always worked for wages. " Thinking of the family's frequent moves which deeply upset his mother, Robert has "often tried in later years to analyze my father's wanderlust. " Robert decided that in moving so often, his father was "apparently seeking business success. " In this respect, "My mother," who "always referred to me as her best daughter" because "I've al- ways tried to do everything to make her happy"-(note the submissive feminine identification)-"has remarked that I'm just the opposite of him. " According to Robert, his mother in no way criticized the father's obsession with external status; she objected only that he did not "stay put" in seeking it and was not "successful" enough. But this seems to have provided a ra- tionale for Robert, while submitting to his father's notion of economic "suc- cess" as the end-all of existence, to assert: "To me, looking back now, he's not the type of a man that I want to pattern my business after. " Robert's ambiv- alent ego-ideal of "business success" is, so he likes to think, "the opposite" of his father's ideal. This might help to explain the inversion of his anti-Semitism, in which he expresses mainly envy of Jewish "drive and ambition to get there," with only furtive signs of his hostility against "the Jew. " "The Jew" perhaps symbolizes less his father directly than it does a superficially differ- ing father-ideal toward which Robert's resentment is even more repressed than toward his actual father. This father-ideal is difficult for him to rebel against even by way of displaced resentment against the symbol of "the Jew," because under moralistic pressure from his mother he is deceived into think- ing that his submission to this ideal is itself an assertion of independence from his father's values.
Ronald's resentment has broken through more openly. After the divorce of his parents when he was 3, he lived with his (paternal) grandmother. He was "taught . . . that ( my mother) had deserted my father and brother and 1. " Upon his father's remarriage, Ronald went, at the age of 7, to live with his father and stepmother. From the beginning there seemed to be "a mutual understanding between my brother and myself that we didn't like her. " Her position as only a secondary mother figure seemed to enable Ronald to express resentments toward her directly. His stepmother, he says, "didn't take any interest at all" and "resented us": "We always felt that we were in the
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way. " A hint of possible homosexual fixation on the father is suggested by jealousy that his father "was more interested in her than in me or my brother. " Ronald expresses much disappointment in the father, and feelings of being victimized by him: The father "was dependable, but he changed"; "worked his way up . . . then drinking caused him to go down. " "He never shirked at the idea of anyone helping him, especially financially. . . . I know he used some of my grandmother's money to buy real estate with. And I know he lost it, and it didn't seem to bother him. " The father gave Ronald an allowance of only fifteen cents a week, which Ronald still resents: "I'll never forget that. " For the most part, however, he blames his stepmother for being "never satis- fied" and "greedy. " Even he. re, his guilt makes him pull back, as if sensing that he may be projecting onto her some of his own feelings: "I thought she was greedy. 'Course it might have been for other reasons-wanting to save something. " Most striking is his almost complete displacement of hate for the father's harsh discipline, onto the stepmother. Telling how his father "didn't believe in sparing the rod" and "laid it on pretty thick," he declares: "The hard part about it was that my stepmother would tell him that my brother or I had done things, and he wouldn't give us a chance to explain. " Ronald actually "ran off twice," but "it didn't cause me to hate him. I held it mostly against her. " (Just as Ronald now "holds it mostly against" those of lesser status and weak position, not those who represent real power. )
Wilbur's parents died in his infancy. He was raised by an aunt and uncle, with whom his main satisfactions, he says, were limited to "board and room, a place to sleep. " The aunt was a "good woman" (i. e. , "pure"). Specifically, she gratified Wilbur's dependency-for-things; she was "good to the children: clothed, fed, took care of us when sick. " "I couldn't think of any" faults in her, except perhaps that "she would never like to go no place-stayed at home all the time" (like the woman Wilbur later chose to marry). He is unable to make his "idealization" of his aunt meaningful by any details; she was "just a good woman," "good to me. " He "never did" confide in her. Wilbur's monosyllabic answers to the examiner's inquiry indicate that his childhood was dominated by the harsh rule of his uncle, whose regime he was ap- parently too submissive to think of questioning. He says that his uncle whipped him several times a month: (Did you ever question whether he was right about it? ) "No. " The uncle, he declares, "treated me okay," but from a very early age "made me work pretty hard. (Q. ) Sun-up to sun-down. (Q. How did you take that? ) We did what the elders told us to. (Q. Did you ever question that? ) Well, I never questioned. " Wilbur was able to rebel only when he could create a persecutory rationale by 'feeling singled out: "Only one disagreement-he wanted me to do more work than his own children. " Wilbur reacted to this rationale with explosive defiance-still submissively unable to criticize his uncle's authoritarianism as such-by abruptly leaving home at the age of r5. With all this, Wilbur in another context describes
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8]9
his uncle as "pretty easy to get along with. " Then, in almost the next breath he n~veals that "he would stay away at night and drink, sometimes come home drunk. My aunt went off in a comer. " Wilbur indicates that he didn't dare to think seriously of criticizing the uncle or of protecting the aunt: (What was your reaction? ) "Didn't think much about it. "
Clarence, too, describes his (real) father as "easy to get along with. " What he admired most about the father was "the way he treated me. (Q. ) Never did abuse me or scold me. " Later, Clarence betrays the reason for his freedom from physical discipline, namely, his own cowed submission to stem parental authority. Although the father would "tell us what we should do, what he wanted us to do, and what he expected us to do," "there wasn't much (disci- pline) to exercise," simply because "we just did what they said. " A moment later, Clarence unwittingly reveals the parental intimidation that forced such utter submission from him: bemoaning the independence of children today, he declares that if he had ever answered his parents back the way he thinks children do now, "I wouldn't be able to sit down! " Clarence has justified his parents' intimidation of him by adopting the same general philosophy of authoritarianism: "Children didn't run wild in those days like they do nowadays. . . . If they have to whip them, I believe in whipping them. I don't believe in sparing the rod and spoiling the child. " This submissive acceptance of parental authoritarianism helps to explain Clarence's inability to evaluate his father objectively: he "didn't know (my father) had any weaknesses. " His description of his mother is equally superficial and moralistic: ''She was a nice, easy-going woman-good mother. " What he admired most about her, he states, was the "way she handled me-always tell me how good I was. " Clarence's distant, stereotyped attitude to his mother is further suggested by his purely physical conception of the way in which "I take after my mother more than my father. (Q. In what ways? ) Well, in my complexion.
(Q.
What about personality traits? ) That I couldn't answer. "
After Eugene's father "ran away when I was 2 years old," his mother went to work as a waitress and "took care of me all my life. " Thus she was both mother and father to Eugene. His remarks about her suggest the fear which forms the basis of his "idealizing" her-namely a desperate dependence on her to "do things" for him: (Note the similarity in phrasing with Eugene's submissive-dependent "idealization" of Roosevelt, who "did things" for Eugene via the C. C. C. ). "She's good. In fact, the best. In other words, she's just tops with me. . . . Does everything for me she can. Writes me all the time. (Q. What do you admire most about her? ) Just about everything. (Q. ) Well, I guess her being so good and friendly to everybody, especially me. (Q. What's an example? ) Well, always trying to do everything for me. Very seldom go uptown without bringing something back for me. (Q. What else? ) When Father went away, Mother took care of me all her life, where she could have put me in a home some place. She always stayed with me in
? 88o THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
trouble. " This dependence, this fear of loss of support, may have been a powerful force driving Eugene to submit to his mother's righteous re. Pres- sion. She is described as having taught him not values but absolutistic moral rules: "She always taught me the difference between right and wrong, the things I should do and shouldn't. " Her moralism, as he describes it, smoth- ered any chance of answering the implicit hostility behind it, because the hos- tility was veiled by a fog of self-righteousness: She would characteristically "just bawl us out" in a way that "made it seem like it was hurting her more than it did us. " "She'd look hurt," with the result that "it just hurt. I never sassed her back or said a mean t'hing. " The implied struggle to hold a desire to "sass her back" is illustrated further in a striking contradiction. The only thing Eugene can imagine that might have prevented his long record of "get- ting in trouble" is more strict moral repression by his mother: "To tell the truth, I don't think she was strict enough with us. " As evidence for this, he mentioned that he sometimes "came home later than I was supposed to. " A minute later, unaware of the contradiction, he declares: "She was pretty strict about that being home on time! " Eugene submitted to his mother's moralism by being "pretty good, up to the time I was r7 years old. " His subsequent "trouble"-gambling, drinking, fighting, and sexual promis- cuity-suggests a belated reaction against this submission. Meanwhile, the hostility which her "hurt" moralism made him suppress causes him to feel guilty and therefore obligated to "do things" for her. Asked what his main satisfactions were in the relationship with his mother, this guilt evokes the inappropriate response that "I guess I haven't made her very happy, but when I'm out there and going straight, I'll always take care of my mother. . . . I feel I've never treated her like I really should. "
2. FASCISTS
The 3 fascist men show, in more extreme form, essentially the same pat- tern of attitudes to parent figures as do the other prejudiced men. Es- pecially notable is their fearful submission to the father, in which homosexual aspects are hardly even disguised.
Buck verbalizes fairly directly his fear of sexuality in relation to his mother: "I'd kinda feel embarrassed if my mother ever brought up a subject like (sex). " His conception of her seems to be exclusively that of an agent to "do things" to gratify his dependence: "She was a hard-workin' lady, took care of us kids. " In fact, when asked what were his main satisfactions in his relationships with his parents, his response is limited to the purely external fact that "they gave me most anything I wanted. " As for his parents' per- sonalities, Buck's orientation toward the external leads him to ask: "You mean the people they associated with? " He cannot go beyond the most super- ficial references to their external roles, such as giving things to himself, being "hard-working" or a "businessman," "got drunk," "gave orders," etc.
? CRIMINALITY AND ANTIDEMOCRA TIC TRENDS 88r
This inhibitory block against any personal relation to them is consistent with the absolute submission which his father forced upon him. Buck "never did see any weaknesses in him. " His blind acceptance of his father's "rightness" about everything explains why: His father, he protests repeatedly;was "gen- erally right when he says something," "always trying to show us the right view of things," "always right in the things he said. " Buck "always figured I had it comin'" when he was "licked," and in his fright "knew right from wrong right away" as an absolute distinction never to be questioned. Hence his father usually needed only to "give us one look and we'd know what he meant. " Buck's fear leads him to say that his parents "never argued . . . even when he (the father) got drunk. " A moment later he naively reveals the reason for the lack of arguments, with no apparent awareness of the contradiction: "Mother didn't say anything. " "If they did" have any disagreements, "they never did let us kids know. " This denial is followed a few sentences later by a description of how sometimes "Dad would go into a rage and walk away . . . and Mother would go into a room and cry; but she'd get over it right away. " Of particular interest, in connection with Buck's fantasy that "most all of them Jews talk about sex mostly . . . about they're gonna (have fellatio per- formed on them) tonight," are some remarks about the ways in which his father (symbolized by Jews? ) used to "talk about sex. " The only sex in- struction Buck had, he declares, consisted in his father's frequent warnings to "watch out for these ch__" in order not to be exploited. In another context he relates how his father began, during his middle 'teens, to give him money for the express purpose of visiting prostitutes. Whether truth or fantasy, this is highly suggestive. It is not difficult to imagine that Buck may have been sexually overstimulated, rather crudely, by his father.
After Floyd's parents separated in his infancy, he rarely saw either of them. Until he was 7 he was raised by a foster mother who boarded children. From age 7 to 14 he lived with his father and a newly acquired stepmother, until he was sent away to boarding school. Floyd describes himself as grossly neglected by the foster mother: "Those people always had something to do from dawn to dusk, and as a kid I never had anything to say. " He "didn't get along too well" with the other children. Discipline was "more corporeal than anything else . . . for any infraction of her so-called rules. " The stepmother he scornfully resented as "just another woman, I guess," "just somebody that was there," and as "mean" and rejective toward himself as "that other woman's child. " He jealously contrasts her with his father as different "in every way. She wasn't his equal in anything-intellectually. " This phrasing raises a sus- picion that Floyd wanted to replace his stepmother and adopt the same "lieu- tenant" role toward his father as he seems to have adopted toward his crime partner. Indirect evidence for this hypothesis is to be found in his "mixed-up loyalty" to his real mother, suggesting definite identification with her feminine role: "I wish she had a husband, and that's the pitiful part of it-a woman
? 882 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
shouldn't be alone. " There is much further evidence of Floyd's intense, if am- bivalent homosexual father fixation. He describes his father as a "very, very fine man, intelligent, understanding. Excellent father . . . in every way . . . a man everybody in the community looked up to. " As to what he admires most about his father, he "couldn't singularize on that. Just all of him. " The one shortcoming which he can think of in his father is aggressive abruptness in criticizing: "Well, he was outspoken. . . . If he thought you were no good or doing something wrong, he didn't hesitate to tell you. " But Floyd's fear of his father compels him to justify even this: "That's as much of an asset in ways. " In fact, Floyd cannot mobilize sufficient aggression toward his father to make a single criticism of him, not even of the father's virtual abandon-? ment of him during the first seven years of his life: "Just always been away, that's all. " He denies that his father ever punished him unjustly. A significant reason for Floyd's anxious splitting-off from conscious awareness of all negative feelings toward his father may be similar to the preoccupation of Eugene toward his mother-fear of complete abandonment. This is suggested by Floyd's description of the quarrels between his father and stepmother. These were "very sharp, and their remarks were lasting and bitter, like, 'We never should have taken him home. ' And Father would be confused. . . . Then he would punish me, once very hard; then he would talk to me until I went to sleep. " This dependence, as well as further signs of homosexual at- tachment, would seem to be expressed in the following remarks: "There's only one help I've got, and that's my father"; although "he's never been close to me," he "has stood by me. . . . This affair has brought us closer to- gether than before"; and "he has written me a beautiful letter. "
Adrian's case reveals in rather pure form the dynamics of a power-ridden type of inverted Oedipus complex: fear-driven homosexual submission to a hated father, and underlying identification with the mother's role as sub- ordinate. His mother, who died in her early twenties when he was only 5, seems to have been a very infantile person with "no sense of humor. " She neglected Adrian entirely except for flaunting her sexuality in his face, and then terrifying him by her "way of punishing me. " She was "a very beautiful woman," "very vivacious," "came out in---society . . . spent most of her life going out to dinners. . . . She mostly ignored me, but she always came to show me how she looked before she went out. . . . Except that my nurse said
I was this or that, she didn't seem to know personally what I was about. " Her punishments, "usually for something petty" such as "stealing fudge off a shelf," were capricious and deeply traumatic: "She locked me in dark closets -scared me to death," or "threatened to give me to a neighborhood woman whom she said was a witch. " Yet the fearful dependence of a little child apparently forced Adrian to repress the hate such treatment must have ex- cited: for in the same breath in which he reveals her self-centered cruelty, he idealizes her and is unable to criticize her for these things. (How did
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you feel toward your mother when she punished you? ) "I loved my mother. I was very crazy about my mother. (Did your mother ever punish you un- justly? ) No. She lost her temper unjustly. She was very vacillating-up one minute and down the next; never knew what she was going to do next. Peo- ple just had to stay out of her way when she was that way. " Questioned about her weaknesses or faults, Adrian declares: "In my memory, she just doesn't have any faults. " His mother's intimidation alone might be thought to have discouraged Adrian's heterosexual development. But fear of a stern father appears to have combined with this to "stampede" Adrian into complete homosexual submission to the father and adoption of the mother's manipulative techniques. The father, who died several years ago, was a military officer who was "not the least bit demonstrative. . . . He dis- approved of any show of emotion of any kind. " Adrian was awed by "his consistency. " "He was a stickler for rules. . . . I thought of him as a sort of tyrant. " Yet, though he seemed "hard as nails with everyone else," he was "very easy with me," because "if my father punished me, (my mother) was so upset that it didn't go. " Adrian describes specific episodes that would seem to have encouraged a fearful "feminine" attitude toward the father: "In- cidentally, whenever she cried, I cried, too. . . . She ofteri threw tantrums, and father just put on his hat and went out, which only made her all the madder.
And I would always cry with her. . . . I always felt when he scolded her, he was scolding me. " Adrian indicates that from earliest infancy he adopted his mother's techniques for manipulating the father: "I hollered . . . usually got my way. In fact, all I ever had to do was cry about anything, and he'd do whatever it was that upset me. " "And remember," says Adrian in explaining his father's coddling him as the father coddled Adrian's mother, "that I look like my mother. " Note the continuing father fixation: "I missed him very much when I was at the boarding house. . . . When I was sick, I used to . . . daydream about his coming to see me. . . . I've saved all my letters to him. . . .
