I was
interested
in the same things.
Adorno-T-Authoritarian-Personality-Harper-Bros-1950
.
.
.
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
? CRIMINALITY AND ANTIDEMOCRA TIC TRENDS
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. . . . He very dramatically returned all my letters, like to an old love. I loved my father very much. " Quite unable to assert any genuine inner independ- ence, Adrian's furtive resentment broke through his weak superego in the form of delinquent rebelliousness: "I became such a worry to him . . . left school when I pleased. I overdrew my charge accounts, and he was ill. " This was followed by an endless succession of delinquencies as an adult. "When he died,'' however, "and when I realized I could never see him again," Adrian began to feel intense shame over his delinquencies and to feel even more deeply submissive to his father: "I put him on a pedestal now he wasn't on for me as a child. . . . He haunts me: I'm always wondering if he would approve of this or approve of that. . . . His judgment was always right. . . . And when I hear opinions expressed, I wonder if they would be his opinion. " Adrian has even made a belated stab at catching up with father-masculinity identi- fications. Before his short-lived parole, he asserted that he was through with
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
his "repulsive" homosexuality, and that although he would have been "happier as a woman," he had "more determination than I am given credit for" and "can live a man's life, since this is a man's world. " & we have seen before, his "determination" lasted for only about two weeks.
3. LOW SCORERS
In contrast with the high scorers' submission, the low-scoring inter- viewees exhibit more underlying independence toward parents, especially toward the father. This includes some capacity for objective evaluation of parents, as well as sonie ability to resist parental authority on the basis of principle. In each case the preferred parent is definitely the mother, who is loved and respected as an individual. At the same time, each of these men reveals a deep ambivalence toward the mother, which is (almost consciously) inhibited, but not denied by masks of overidealization and reverence. The ambivalence appears to center around frustrated love-dependency longings. It is this primary love-orientation, however, which forms the basis of genuine liking for people and for democratic identifications. And to the extent that these men carry out identifications with underdogs and show resistance to status quo injustice, a basis was formed in early assertions of independence as underdogs in relation to parental authority. Their failure to carry out such identification fully may be due to inhibitions against asserting full in- dependence from parents.
By his "autopsychoanalysis," Art has made partly conscious his "Oedipus complex"; or, as he says he prefers to call it (denying specifically sexual feel- ings toward his mother)-his "dependency complex," later displaced onto mother substitutes. After the death of the father when Art was 9, several factors combined to intensify this complex. His sister and (paternal) half- brother went to stay with relatives. This left Art alone "at home with Mother, who had an advertising job. " Their relationship, he indicates, was quite close, but with himself in a dependent role (though with reciprocating nurturance) toward his mother-provider: "I stayed at home and cooked the meals and did the housework. " She apparently overstimulated his sexual fan- tasies, in a way that made it harder for him to overcome the mother fixation, by glorifying his body as a "precious possession. " And when he was "about 14" she presented to him "the business of childbirth and conception . . . in a very cold-blooded way" (note the almost-conscious ambivalence toward the mother) including an arrangement for him to watch several childbirth operations surreptitiously. Withal, Art's image of her stresses inner, psy- chological values: "An intellectual and a very well-educated person. Her principal gift seems to be that of perception. And a musician-pianist- . . . not by trade but certainly by nature. " Her frailties include "a psychological disturbance as great as mine. Fortunately didn't cause her as much trouble, but certainly caused her as much anguish. " The mother's emotional support
? CRIMINALITY AND ANTIDEMOCRA TIC TRENDS ss5
seemed to help Art assert considerable independence of his father: e. g. , ex- plicitly rejecting the latter's anti-Semitism; evaluating him with some critical- ness as "spoiled" by his "rich parents" as "an only child"; criticizing his disci- pline as having "not much consistency"; and rejecting his father's discipline when it seemed unfair, in which case "you got nothing but a lot of argument from me. " The mother was in some ways a better model: her discipline "de- prived us of privileges" but "had more effect" because of her greater consist- ency-"she meant what she said. " The father's capriciousness, as a masculine model to identify with, seemed to confuse Art's conception of his own ego- identity. For instance, in pursuing the career of artist? and having to compro- mise by becoming a commercial artist, Art was following his father, who "of course was fostering any particular art ability I had. " But "curiously enough, I don't think I have any particular art ability" though "no one else thinks it is either ordinary or mediocre. " Instead, "I think I could become a good musi- cian, pianist" (like his mother); although he admits on questioning that "I don't play the piano at all. " Art even makes explicit his conflict over in- ternalizing the father as a masculine model: though the father "championed my causes. ? ? . I didn't like my father as champion-preferred my mother as champion. " Art recognizes that his father was "temperamental," "running away from something, too . . . managed to dissipate a rather large fortune" by drinking and gambling which caused "considerable domestic strife: I didn't like it. " Yet having himself "started drinking," done some gambling, chafed against "commercializing" his artistic bent by getting fired from sev- eral jobs, and "transferred my dependency" onto prison by check-writing -Art senses that he has "probably got some of (my father's) extravagant qualities. "
Don's life, too, has been dominated by a neurotic overattachment to his mother. His underlying love-dependency has been masked, however, by his reciprocal role of nurturant protector to his mother. In pre-adolescence he became actively involved in the "bitter quarrels" between his parents con- cerning the father's "going with women. " He took the mother's side, strongly criticizing the father, who repeatedly "licked my pants off" for intervening. "At the same time, I tried to bring them back together; they still care for each other. " But his efforts at mediation were unsuccessful: his parents were divorced when he was 12, and from then on Don supported himself, living with several other boys. (One wonders if Don's experience of being squeezed between his two adult giants partly determines his opinion that "both labor and business sort of ignore the little fellow. ") Years later, in the mother's third marriage, her husband "took her" for a great deal of money, which he lost in a succession of wildcat schemes. Eventually she went into debt, mortgaging the old family farm. Don, having tried in vain to persuade her to divorce the man, and inhibiting conscious wishes to kill him, borrowed heavily to keep her in funds. He then carried out a series of
? 886 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
bank robberies (by himself) to make these debts good, and to continue supplying money to his mother. On the last one, after a wild automo- bile and foot chase by a bank manager, he let himself be caught rather than shoot the unarmed man with his loaded gun. Don recognizes that his mother is "governed by emotional biases," by "willingness to accept and believe too much . . . generous to a fault . . . not too practical, forbearing to a fault ? ? ? not assertive enough. " But he respects her deeply as "quite a per- son" who "has taken up something every year of her life. . . . She has recently learned to play the accordion; she studied music all her life. " Dan's ego- identity, like Art's, seems to be confused with respect to mother-versus father-identifications: he feels that he takes after his father in not being "governed by emotional biases as Mother is. " This conflicts sharply with his statement that prison is "the first time that I haven't been beset by all sorts of emotional problems. " Ambivalence toward his mother's "emotional biases" is indicated by his first, abrupt response to questioning about his mother's weaknesses: "Let's call it emotional and let it go at that. "
Jim's involvement with his mother is still deeper, with respect to both love-dependency feelings and nurturant protection of her, as well as strong hostility close to the surface. Conflict with the father is also more violent. Jim has been very close to his mother, as to an intimate sweetheart: "I could talk to my mother about any subject under the sun. No embarrassment there.
I was interested in the same things. . . . Both of us are a little sensitive in temperament, kind of quiet. I think we both like a certain amount of solitude. I used to like to take her out to dinner, to the theatre quite often. " During the depression, as he struggled against poverty to support his mother, she says that he was "a prince, and went without eating himself to buy fruit for me. " Jim is able to criticize her as "not social enough . . . by herself too much" and as "having a little temper," but he formulates his near-conscious ambivalence: "It's a little difficult to find weaknesses in one's mother. . . . We usually tend to overlook a mother's weaknesses. . . . I find it difficult to find very many frailties. " At another point Jim indicates unmistakably the process of con- sciously struggling to inhibit, by what he calls "insight," resentments toward his mother. Citing, in response to questioning, an occasion on which she had spanked him impulsively for something that wasn't his fault, he declares: "At the time I resented it. Today I don't. I know she did things the best she could. . . . I didn't have enough insight then. " Of the father, who deserted the family for eight years during the 'thirties, Jim says: "My dad used to get drunk quite often, and he would beat (my mother) physically. . . . He's a little crude, so- cially. He's very happy-go-lucky. He likes to fish. He's very egotistical, I think a little too much so. Very stubborn in argument. If he believes a thing, why that's it. He probably has an inferiority complex which he never admits to himself. " The mother expresses the view that Jim was reduced to "a hope- less state of mind . . . due to his father's hardness and cruelty. " But note
? ness. )
CRIMINALITY AND ANTIDEMOCRA TIC TRENDS
Jim's love-oriented wish to believe that his relation to his father was none- theless "a very friendly relationship. He was pretty much of a pal. We liked to go places together, fishing, play cards, etc. W e had a lot of good times. " (Recall Jim's close relationship with an older man whom he persuaded to stop drinking, and who was in turn kind to him. )
Dick, too, was closer to his mother than to his father. "I always like to putter around the house with Mother. Mother and I were pals more than Father. . ? ? I confided in Mother a good deal. (What's an example? ) Well, sex. Mother was much more free about it than Father. " Nonetheless, Dick's conception of her is more "moral" and conventional than that of the other low-scoring interviewees, and reflects some dependence-for-things: He de- scribes her as a "good housekeeper, always interested in the kids' welfare. Liked to putter around the house. " He admired most in her "the fact that she's always looked after the kids the best she could, and kept a very nice
household and dresses nice. Personal appearance always kept up to snuff. Doesn't smoke and doesn't drink. " Dick is also unable to criticize her di- rectly: (Weaknesses? ) "Well, might say my dad is her principal weakness. He can talk her out of most anything. . . . (Other weaknesses? ) By golly, I don't know. I can't think of a one. " His hostility toward her for her greater strictness, as compared with the father, is not difficult to infer: "Dad tried to" exercise the discipline, "but he was too easy-going, so Mother did. . . . Never had a whipping. She used to take privileges away . . . for not coming home on time. That was the main thing. . ? . I got a wild streak for about six months before I went into the service. First got the use of a car then. Neglected my studies for picnics and dates in the evenings. " (One may wonder if this was not in protest against his mother's moral strictness). As for the father, who "always found something to laugh at-very easy to get along with," Dick mentions his main weaknesses as violations of the mother's strictness: "Might say he's a sucker for anybody's sob story," and "pretty lenient with his kids . . . would let us play hookey, would let me have the car a bit too often; too easy with money for us kids," whereas the mother was a"little more careful about money. " (Recall that Dick's fiancee, the crippled girl "back home," is "not wild-steady"; she might be a mother figure who could help him to inhibit resentment against his mother's strict-
I. "CRIMINALITY" IN HIGH AND LOW SCORERS
1. GENERAL
What relations may exist between "criminality" and the antidemocratic trends? Two kinds of data ? are available: mean scores on the scales for sub- groups composed of legally defined offense categories, and certain interview material. Table 5 (XXI) presents the E- and F-scale means for the legally
? 888
THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY TABLE 5 (XXI)
MEAN E- AND F-SCALE SCORES OF THE PRISON INMATES, GROUPED ACCORDING TO OFFENSE
Offense Group
Number E Scale F Scale
of Cases Mean/Person/Item Mean/Person/Item
Check-writing 44 4. 45 4. 76 Robbery, burglary, theft 31 4. 63 4. 39 Murder 12 4. 31 4. 33 Sex offenses 23 5. 02 5. 33
110 4. 61 4. 73
defined offense categories-murderers, robbers, etc. None of the differences between means of different offense groups are statistically significant. As for the relevant interview material, the heterogeneity of offenses combined with the small number of cases would seem to discourage general conclusions. But perhaps if an appropriate level of generalization can be found, a brief re- view of this material might be rewarded with further insight. Such a review
is now presented, considering the interviewees one by one.
2. HIGH SCORERS (INCLUDING FASCISTS)
Complete details are not available as to the exact circumstances of each of the interviewees' offenses and their attitudes toward these offenses. None- theless the material obtained is highly suggestive.
Robert's murder of his hostile, despised mistress was the climax of a flight into sexual promiscuity which has been interpreted as an unconscious at- tempt to quiet fears of nonmasculinity that his wife's frigidity may have intensified. Ronald's habitual gang robbery "as a business" appears to have represented an easy way of obtaining money as well as an effort to "pro,ve" himself a "big operator. " Eugene's delinquencies consist of a long history of "trouble": getting easy money by check-writing, gambling, drinking, and especially fighting, of which he is both proud because of its manliness and ashamed because of being "a little wild. " In contrast with his submissiveness to his moralistic mother, by being "good, up to the time I was 17 years old," this behavior sounds like a belated protest of "masculinity. " Wilbur's mur- der of his landlord following eviction, and his development of paranoid anti-Greek delusions, appears to have been a desperate defiance of an emas- culating father figure, in order to reassert his own threatened masculinity. Clarence's sexual assaults on children, with his accompanying paranoid de- lusions of being "framed by the people in politics," seem to be attempts to
? ' CRIMINALITY AND ANTIDEMOCRA TIC TRENDS
"prove" masculinity and suppress homosexual panic. Buck's statutory rape of a young girl and molesting of his own small children probably have simi- lar meanings. His drunken check-writing spree with a despised prostitute seems to have been an attempt to bolster his masculinity by means of hetero- sexual promiscuity and "big-shot financier" behavior. Floyd's gang rob- beries were undisguised attempts to be a "big operator," to be "tough," and to gain easy power. Similarly for his disturbing the peace by drunken brawls, and his repeated Army A. W. O. L. 's, which characteristically involved a spree with "a married woman as usual. " Adrian's cap-pistol robbery was, by his own statement, an attempt to "prove" that he could "lead. " He himself attributes this act in part to some glandular treatments he had just completed a week before, which he feels made him "more masculine. "
The one feature which all of these offenses have in common is that they represent attempts to "prove" something. What they seek to "prove" is toughness, strength, power, all of which signify "masculinity. " More sig- nificantly, they are attempts to deny something, namely, what to the sub- ject means psychologically "weakness" and "nonmasculinity"-whether this be nonheterosexuality, impotence, homosexual impulses, submissiveness, de- pendence, softness, or passivity. In a word, the high scorers' crimes express the emotional complex that seems to dominate their lives: desperate fear of their own "weakness," which they try to deny by a fa~ade of masculinity. Thus what superficially looks like direct, uninhibited expression of im- pulses in these men, turns out to be a cover-up for intense inhibition and fear.
3. LOW SCORERS
Art has himself interpreted his check-writing, in which he made no efforts to avoid getting caught, as an unconscious attempt to transfer his ambivalent dependency from his wife onto the prison "mother. " He ascribes the origin of this complex to his attachment to his mother. Don's bank robberies for his mother express a similar mother attachment, in which his own love- dependence is closely associated with nurturance toward his mother. Near- conscious ambivalence is verbalized toward the emotional biases by which her behavior is governed. Jim's clubbing of a middle-aged woman and then kissing and chewing her breasts-all carried out while drunk and in a dazed, fugue-like state, with later partial amnesia-suggests a direct expres- sion of primitive mother-oriented ambivalence. His earlier theft of an auto for a joy ride with an older woman may well have been related to the same general conflicts. Dick's theft of an auto to drive a woman to Reno to marry, while both were drunk, seems to have been part of his near-con-. scious search for consolation, after the frustration of his love-dependent- nurturant desire to marry the crippled girl "back home. "
Each of these men's offenses suggests different aspects of a common con- ? stellation which dominates their lives: longing to be loved by and to love ?
? THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
a mother figure who will both "mother" them and let them "father" her- with near-conscious ambivalence to women, caused by frustration of this striving.
The crimes of the high and low scorers thus seem to express their different central strivings or life-themes: antiweakness defenses versus ambivalent quest-for-love. They do not appear to be differentiated, with respect to the manifest violence of their offenses. It seems that the same legal offense, ~nd the same degree of violence, may spring from quite different underlying per-
sonality structures; accordingly, as other writers have noted (5 r, 103 ), the legal offense per se is a poor index of susceptibility to rehabilitation. There is a strong suggestion, however, that low scorers offer considerably more prom- ise of rehabilitation than do high scorers. This follows from the apparent greater capacity of the former to establish genuine relationships with other people; just as their criminal behavior seems to have followed upon frustra- tion of the need for love, or upon some crisis in their love relationships, so would the establishment of new relationships offer the basis for changed be- havior. In the high scorers, on the other hand, relationships based primarily upon love would seem to be very difficult of achievement; rather, we should expect new relationships in their case to conform with the old pattern of dominance-submission, something which, though it might induce conform- ing behavior for the moment, would in the end only strengthen those per-
sonality structures which are basic to their criminality-and to <-heir fascist potential.
? CHAPTER XXII
PSYCHOLOGICAL ILL HEAL TH IN RE- LA TION TO POTENTIAL FASCISM: A STUDY OF PSYCHIATRIC CLINIC PATIENTS1 Maria Hertz Levinson
A. INTRODUCTION
If differences in ideology are significantly related to personality differences, then one would expect ideology to be related also to various kinds of mental disturbance. It is the contention of modern psychiatry that the experiences and behavior of mentally disturbed persons differ only in degree from those of normal people, and that the disturbances which any given individual de- velops depend in very large part on his personality structure. Indeed, most of the concepts of modern psychology of personality were first developed on the basis of material from psychologically unhealthy people. The reasons for this were similar to the reasons, given below, which prompted the present study of ideology and personality in psychiatric patients.
In the first place, it is usually easier to describe and to explain the more pathological personality patterns than the more "healthy" ones. "Healthy" people, to be sure, also have problems, i. e. , areas in which their adjustment to outer and inner stresses is not entirely smooth. They have, however, to a large extent "solved" these problems. They have succeeded in sublimat- ing or successfully controlling their primitive impulses and, to the extent that inner problems still exist, they are able to achieve life situations which help to minimize their conflicts and anxieties. Those who need therapy, have, on the other hand, whether they are aware of the need or not, failed to achieve the proper balance, and the nature and degree of their imbalance is usually plain to be seen. The primitive impulses break through in more or less undisguised forms, the defensive struggles against them can often be
1 The writer wishes to thank Dr. Karl Bowman, head of the Langley Porter Clinic, for making the Clinic facilities available. She also is indebted to Dr. Robert E. Harris, Chief Psychologist, for his generous support and numerous helpful suggestions, and to various members of the Clinic staff for their aid and cooperation.
891
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
clearly observed, and the conflicts with the environment are often still in progress. Thus, the ". elements" and adjustment mechanisms of the personality are here more clearly discernible than in psychologically healthy individuals.
In the second place, an advantage in using the psychiatric clinic as a labora- tory lies in the fact that here, more than in the usual research interview, peo- ple are willing to disclose the more intimate details of their lives. Thus, studies on patients who are strongly motivated to tell the truth about them- selves may help to validate the methods used for the study of other groups.
Thirdly, the present investigation sought an approach to the very dif- ficult problem of the relation between ideology and the dimension of psy- chological health-ill health. Are people with psychological disturbances- severe enough to make them seek psychiatric help-more prejudiced or less prejudiced than other groups of people? What is the general relation between neurosis and psychosis, on the one hand, and ideology on the other? Are par- ticular patterns of ideology significantly related to any of the common psychiatric diagnostic groups?
In an attempt to answer these and other questions, I 2 I psychiatric pa- tients were studied by means of our questionnaire and other methods. Data bearing on such factors as intelligence level, education, type of complaint, and psychiatric diagnosis were obtained from the Clinic records. In addition, 16 cases were studied intensively by means of interviews and the Thematic Apperception Test, and all material previously collected by the Clinic workers was brought into the picture. A majority of the subjects also took a standard- ized test known as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. In analyzing and interpreting these data, concepts and findings from the other areas of the study as a whole were employed to the full.
B. THE NA TURE OF THE SAMPLE
The subjects, 7I women and 50 men, were all patients at the Langley Porter Clinic in San Francisco, a state institution for the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders. Violent cases and cases for permanent commitment are not admitted. At the time of the study reported in the present chapter, the inpatient department had three wards (about 45 beds) for patients requiring temporary hospitalization. Most of these cases can be classed as severe neu- roses or mild psychoses. The majority of the patients are treated in the out. . patient department, where adults are seen regularly for therapeutic inter- views and various psychological procedures.
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
? CRIMINALITY AND ANTIDEMOCRA TIC TRENDS
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. . . . He very dramatically returned all my letters, like to an old love. I loved my father very much. " Quite unable to assert any genuine inner independ- ence, Adrian's furtive resentment broke through his weak superego in the form of delinquent rebelliousness: "I became such a worry to him . . . left school when I pleased. I overdrew my charge accounts, and he was ill. " This was followed by an endless succession of delinquencies as an adult. "When he died,'' however, "and when I realized I could never see him again," Adrian began to feel intense shame over his delinquencies and to feel even more deeply submissive to his father: "I put him on a pedestal now he wasn't on for me as a child. . . . He haunts me: I'm always wondering if he would approve of this or approve of that. . . . His judgment was always right. . . . And when I hear opinions expressed, I wonder if they would be his opinion. " Adrian has even made a belated stab at catching up with father-masculinity identi- fications. Before his short-lived parole, he asserted that he was through with
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
his "repulsive" homosexuality, and that although he would have been "happier as a woman," he had "more determination than I am given credit for" and "can live a man's life, since this is a man's world. " & we have seen before, his "determination" lasted for only about two weeks.
3. LOW SCORERS
In contrast with the high scorers' submission, the low-scoring inter- viewees exhibit more underlying independence toward parents, especially toward the father. This includes some capacity for objective evaluation of parents, as well as sonie ability to resist parental authority on the basis of principle. In each case the preferred parent is definitely the mother, who is loved and respected as an individual. At the same time, each of these men reveals a deep ambivalence toward the mother, which is (almost consciously) inhibited, but not denied by masks of overidealization and reverence. The ambivalence appears to center around frustrated love-dependency longings. It is this primary love-orientation, however, which forms the basis of genuine liking for people and for democratic identifications. And to the extent that these men carry out identifications with underdogs and show resistance to status quo injustice, a basis was formed in early assertions of independence as underdogs in relation to parental authority. Their failure to carry out such identification fully may be due to inhibitions against asserting full in- dependence from parents.
By his "autopsychoanalysis," Art has made partly conscious his "Oedipus complex"; or, as he says he prefers to call it (denying specifically sexual feel- ings toward his mother)-his "dependency complex," later displaced onto mother substitutes. After the death of the father when Art was 9, several factors combined to intensify this complex. His sister and (paternal) half- brother went to stay with relatives. This left Art alone "at home with Mother, who had an advertising job. " Their relationship, he indicates, was quite close, but with himself in a dependent role (though with reciprocating nurturance) toward his mother-provider: "I stayed at home and cooked the meals and did the housework. " She apparently overstimulated his sexual fan- tasies, in a way that made it harder for him to overcome the mother fixation, by glorifying his body as a "precious possession. " And when he was "about 14" she presented to him "the business of childbirth and conception . . . in a very cold-blooded way" (note the almost-conscious ambivalence toward the mother) including an arrangement for him to watch several childbirth operations surreptitiously. Withal, Art's image of her stresses inner, psy- chological values: "An intellectual and a very well-educated person. Her principal gift seems to be that of perception. And a musician-pianist- . . . not by trade but certainly by nature. " Her frailties include "a psychological disturbance as great as mine. Fortunately didn't cause her as much trouble, but certainly caused her as much anguish. " The mother's emotional support
? CRIMINALITY AND ANTIDEMOCRA TIC TRENDS ss5
seemed to help Art assert considerable independence of his father: e. g. , ex- plicitly rejecting the latter's anti-Semitism; evaluating him with some critical- ness as "spoiled" by his "rich parents" as "an only child"; criticizing his disci- pline as having "not much consistency"; and rejecting his father's discipline when it seemed unfair, in which case "you got nothing but a lot of argument from me. " The mother was in some ways a better model: her discipline "de- prived us of privileges" but "had more effect" because of her greater consist- ency-"she meant what she said. " The father's capriciousness, as a masculine model to identify with, seemed to confuse Art's conception of his own ego- identity. For instance, in pursuing the career of artist? and having to compro- mise by becoming a commercial artist, Art was following his father, who "of course was fostering any particular art ability I had. " But "curiously enough, I don't think I have any particular art ability" though "no one else thinks it is either ordinary or mediocre. " Instead, "I think I could become a good musi- cian, pianist" (like his mother); although he admits on questioning that "I don't play the piano at all. " Art even makes explicit his conflict over in- ternalizing the father as a masculine model: though the father "championed my causes. ? ? . I didn't like my father as champion-preferred my mother as champion. " Art recognizes that his father was "temperamental," "running away from something, too . . . managed to dissipate a rather large fortune" by drinking and gambling which caused "considerable domestic strife: I didn't like it. " Yet having himself "started drinking," done some gambling, chafed against "commercializing" his artistic bent by getting fired from sev- eral jobs, and "transferred my dependency" onto prison by check-writing -Art senses that he has "probably got some of (my father's) extravagant qualities. "
Don's life, too, has been dominated by a neurotic overattachment to his mother. His underlying love-dependency has been masked, however, by his reciprocal role of nurturant protector to his mother. In pre-adolescence he became actively involved in the "bitter quarrels" between his parents con- cerning the father's "going with women. " He took the mother's side, strongly criticizing the father, who repeatedly "licked my pants off" for intervening. "At the same time, I tried to bring them back together; they still care for each other. " But his efforts at mediation were unsuccessful: his parents were divorced when he was 12, and from then on Don supported himself, living with several other boys. (One wonders if Don's experience of being squeezed between his two adult giants partly determines his opinion that "both labor and business sort of ignore the little fellow. ") Years later, in the mother's third marriage, her husband "took her" for a great deal of money, which he lost in a succession of wildcat schemes. Eventually she went into debt, mortgaging the old family farm. Don, having tried in vain to persuade her to divorce the man, and inhibiting conscious wishes to kill him, borrowed heavily to keep her in funds. He then carried out a series of
? 886 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
bank robberies (by himself) to make these debts good, and to continue supplying money to his mother. On the last one, after a wild automo- bile and foot chase by a bank manager, he let himself be caught rather than shoot the unarmed man with his loaded gun. Don recognizes that his mother is "governed by emotional biases," by "willingness to accept and believe too much . . . generous to a fault . . . not too practical, forbearing to a fault ? ? ? not assertive enough. " But he respects her deeply as "quite a per- son" who "has taken up something every year of her life. . . . She has recently learned to play the accordion; she studied music all her life. " Dan's ego- identity, like Art's, seems to be confused with respect to mother-versus father-identifications: he feels that he takes after his father in not being "governed by emotional biases as Mother is. " This conflicts sharply with his statement that prison is "the first time that I haven't been beset by all sorts of emotional problems. " Ambivalence toward his mother's "emotional biases" is indicated by his first, abrupt response to questioning about his mother's weaknesses: "Let's call it emotional and let it go at that. "
Jim's involvement with his mother is still deeper, with respect to both love-dependency feelings and nurturant protection of her, as well as strong hostility close to the surface. Conflict with the father is also more violent. Jim has been very close to his mother, as to an intimate sweetheart: "I could talk to my mother about any subject under the sun. No embarrassment there.
I was interested in the same things. . . . Both of us are a little sensitive in temperament, kind of quiet. I think we both like a certain amount of solitude. I used to like to take her out to dinner, to the theatre quite often. " During the depression, as he struggled against poverty to support his mother, she says that he was "a prince, and went without eating himself to buy fruit for me. " Jim is able to criticize her as "not social enough . . . by herself too much" and as "having a little temper," but he formulates his near-conscious ambivalence: "It's a little difficult to find weaknesses in one's mother. . . . We usually tend to overlook a mother's weaknesses. . . . I find it difficult to find very many frailties. " At another point Jim indicates unmistakably the process of con- sciously struggling to inhibit, by what he calls "insight," resentments toward his mother. Citing, in response to questioning, an occasion on which she had spanked him impulsively for something that wasn't his fault, he declares: "At the time I resented it. Today I don't. I know she did things the best she could. . . . I didn't have enough insight then. " Of the father, who deserted the family for eight years during the 'thirties, Jim says: "My dad used to get drunk quite often, and he would beat (my mother) physically. . . . He's a little crude, so- cially. He's very happy-go-lucky. He likes to fish. He's very egotistical, I think a little too much so. Very stubborn in argument. If he believes a thing, why that's it. He probably has an inferiority complex which he never admits to himself. " The mother expresses the view that Jim was reduced to "a hope- less state of mind . . . due to his father's hardness and cruelty. " But note
? ness. )
CRIMINALITY AND ANTIDEMOCRA TIC TRENDS
Jim's love-oriented wish to believe that his relation to his father was none- theless "a very friendly relationship. He was pretty much of a pal. We liked to go places together, fishing, play cards, etc. W e had a lot of good times. " (Recall Jim's close relationship with an older man whom he persuaded to stop drinking, and who was in turn kind to him. )
Dick, too, was closer to his mother than to his father. "I always like to putter around the house with Mother. Mother and I were pals more than Father. . ? ? I confided in Mother a good deal. (What's an example? ) Well, sex. Mother was much more free about it than Father. " Nonetheless, Dick's conception of her is more "moral" and conventional than that of the other low-scoring interviewees, and reflects some dependence-for-things: He de- scribes her as a "good housekeeper, always interested in the kids' welfare. Liked to putter around the house. " He admired most in her "the fact that she's always looked after the kids the best she could, and kept a very nice
household and dresses nice. Personal appearance always kept up to snuff. Doesn't smoke and doesn't drink. " Dick is also unable to criticize her di- rectly: (Weaknesses? ) "Well, might say my dad is her principal weakness. He can talk her out of most anything. . . . (Other weaknesses? ) By golly, I don't know. I can't think of a one. " His hostility toward her for her greater strictness, as compared with the father, is not difficult to infer: "Dad tried to" exercise the discipline, "but he was too easy-going, so Mother did. . . . Never had a whipping. She used to take privileges away . . . for not coming home on time. That was the main thing. . ? . I got a wild streak for about six months before I went into the service. First got the use of a car then. Neglected my studies for picnics and dates in the evenings. " (One may wonder if this was not in protest against his mother's moral strictness). As for the father, who "always found something to laugh at-very easy to get along with," Dick mentions his main weaknesses as violations of the mother's strictness: "Might say he's a sucker for anybody's sob story," and "pretty lenient with his kids . . . would let us play hookey, would let me have the car a bit too often; too easy with money for us kids," whereas the mother was a"little more careful about money. " (Recall that Dick's fiancee, the crippled girl "back home," is "not wild-steady"; she might be a mother figure who could help him to inhibit resentment against his mother's strict-
I. "CRIMINALITY" IN HIGH AND LOW SCORERS
1. GENERAL
What relations may exist between "criminality" and the antidemocratic trends? Two kinds of data ? are available: mean scores on the scales for sub- groups composed of legally defined offense categories, and certain interview material. Table 5 (XXI) presents the E- and F-scale means for the legally
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THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY TABLE 5 (XXI)
MEAN E- AND F-SCALE SCORES OF THE PRISON INMATES, GROUPED ACCORDING TO OFFENSE
Offense Group
Number E Scale F Scale
of Cases Mean/Person/Item Mean/Person/Item
Check-writing 44 4. 45 4. 76 Robbery, burglary, theft 31 4. 63 4. 39 Murder 12 4. 31 4. 33 Sex offenses 23 5. 02 5. 33
110 4. 61 4. 73
defined offense categories-murderers, robbers, etc. None of the differences between means of different offense groups are statistically significant. As for the relevant interview material, the heterogeneity of offenses combined with the small number of cases would seem to discourage general conclusions. But perhaps if an appropriate level of generalization can be found, a brief re- view of this material might be rewarded with further insight. Such a review
is now presented, considering the interviewees one by one.
2. HIGH SCORERS (INCLUDING FASCISTS)
Complete details are not available as to the exact circumstances of each of the interviewees' offenses and their attitudes toward these offenses. None- theless the material obtained is highly suggestive.
Robert's murder of his hostile, despised mistress was the climax of a flight into sexual promiscuity which has been interpreted as an unconscious at- tempt to quiet fears of nonmasculinity that his wife's frigidity may have intensified. Ronald's habitual gang robbery "as a business" appears to have represented an easy way of obtaining money as well as an effort to "pro,ve" himself a "big operator. " Eugene's delinquencies consist of a long history of "trouble": getting easy money by check-writing, gambling, drinking, and especially fighting, of which he is both proud because of its manliness and ashamed because of being "a little wild. " In contrast with his submissiveness to his moralistic mother, by being "good, up to the time I was 17 years old," this behavior sounds like a belated protest of "masculinity. " Wilbur's mur- der of his landlord following eviction, and his development of paranoid anti-Greek delusions, appears to have been a desperate defiance of an emas- culating father figure, in order to reassert his own threatened masculinity. Clarence's sexual assaults on children, with his accompanying paranoid de- lusions of being "framed by the people in politics," seem to be attempts to
? ' CRIMINALITY AND ANTIDEMOCRA TIC TRENDS
"prove" masculinity and suppress homosexual panic. Buck's statutory rape of a young girl and molesting of his own small children probably have simi- lar meanings. His drunken check-writing spree with a despised prostitute seems to have been an attempt to bolster his masculinity by means of hetero- sexual promiscuity and "big-shot financier" behavior. Floyd's gang rob- beries were undisguised attempts to be a "big operator," to be "tough," and to gain easy power. Similarly for his disturbing the peace by drunken brawls, and his repeated Army A. W. O. L. 's, which characteristically involved a spree with "a married woman as usual. " Adrian's cap-pistol robbery was, by his own statement, an attempt to "prove" that he could "lead. " He himself attributes this act in part to some glandular treatments he had just completed a week before, which he feels made him "more masculine. "
The one feature which all of these offenses have in common is that they represent attempts to "prove" something. What they seek to "prove" is toughness, strength, power, all of which signify "masculinity. " More sig- nificantly, they are attempts to deny something, namely, what to the sub- ject means psychologically "weakness" and "nonmasculinity"-whether this be nonheterosexuality, impotence, homosexual impulses, submissiveness, de- pendence, softness, or passivity. In a word, the high scorers' crimes express the emotional complex that seems to dominate their lives: desperate fear of their own "weakness," which they try to deny by a fa~ade of masculinity. Thus what superficially looks like direct, uninhibited expression of im- pulses in these men, turns out to be a cover-up for intense inhibition and fear.
3. LOW SCORERS
Art has himself interpreted his check-writing, in which he made no efforts to avoid getting caught, as an unconscious attempt to transfer his ambivalent dependency from his wife onto the prison "mother. " He ascribes the origin of this complex to his attachment to his mother. Don's bank robberies for his mother express a similar mother attachment, in which his own love- dependence is closely associated with nurturance toward his mother. Near- conscious ambivalence is verbalized toward the emotional biases by which her behavior is governed. Jim's clubbing of a middle-aged woman and then kissing and chewing her breasts-all carried out while drunk and in a dazed, fugue-like state, with later partial amnesia-suggests a direct expres- sion of primitive mother-oriented ambivalence. His earlier theft of an auto for a joy ride with an older woman may well have been related to the same general conflicts. Dick's theft of an auto to drive a woman to Reno to marry, while both were drunk, seems to have been part of his near-con-. scious search for consolation, after the frustration of his love-dependent- nurturant desire to marry the crippled girl "back home. "
Each of these men's offenses suggests different aspects of a common con- ? stellation which dominates their lives: longing to be loved by and to love ?
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a mother figure who will both "mother" them and let them "father" her- with near-conscious ambivalence to women, caused by frustration of this striving.
The crimes of the high and low scorers thus seem to express their different central strivings or life-themes: antiweakness defenses versus ambivalent quest-for-love. They do not appear to be differentiated, with respect to the manifest violence of their offenses. It seems that the same legal offense, ~nd the same degree of violence, may spring from quite different underlying per-
sonality structures; accordingly, as other writers have noted (5 r, 103 ), the legal offense per se is a poor index of susceptibility to rehabilitation. There is a strong suggestion, however, that low scorers offer considerably more prom- ise of rehabilitation than do high scorers. This follows from the apparent greater capacity of the former to establish genuine relationships with other people; just as their criminal behavior seems to have followed upon frustra- tion of the need for love, or upon some crisis in their love relationships, so would the establishment of new relationships offer the basis for changed be- havior. In the high scorers, on the other hand, relationships based primarily upon love would seem to be very difficult of achievement; rather, we should expect new relationships in their case to conform with the old pattern of dominance-submission, something which, though it might induce conform- ing behavior for the moment, would in the end only strengthen those per-
sonality structures which are basic to their criminality-and to <-heir fascist potential.
? CHAPTER XXII
PSYCHOLOGICAL ILL HEAL TH IN RE- LA TION TO POTENTIAL FASCISM: A STUDY OF PSYCHIATRIC CLINIC PATIENTS1 Maria Hertz Levinson
A. INTRODUCTION
If differences in ideology are significantly related to personality differences, then one would expect ideology to be related also to various kinds of mental disturbance. It is the contention of modern psychiatry that the experiences and behavior of mentally disturbed persons differ only in degree from those of normal people, and that the disturbances which any given individual de- velops depend in very large part on his personality structure. Indeed, most of the concepts of modern psychology of personality were first developed on the basis of material from psychologically unhealthy people. The reasons for this were similar to the reasons, given below, which prompted the present study of ideology and personality in psychiatric patients.
In the first place, it is usually easier to describe and to explain the more pathological personality patterns than the more "healthy" ones. "Healthy" people, to be sure, also have problems, i. e. , areas in which their adjustment to outer and inner stresses is not entirely smooth. They have, however, to a large extent "solved" these problems. They have succeeded in sublimat- ing or successfully controlling their primitive impulses and, to the extent that inner problems still exist, they are able to achieve life situations which help to minimize their conflicts and anxieties. Those who need therapy, have, on the other hand, whether they are aware of the need or not, failed to achieve the proper balance, and the nature and degree of their imbalance is usually plain to be seen. The primitive impulses break through in more or less undisguised forms, the defensive struggles against them can often be
1 The writer wishes to thank Dr. Karl Bowman, head of the Langley Porter Clinic, for making the Clinic facilities available. She also is indebted to Dr. Robert E. Harris, Chief Psychologist, for his generous support and numerous helpful suggestions, and to various members of the Clinic staff for their aid and cooperation.
891
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clearly observed, and the conflicts with the environment are often still in progress. Thus, the ". elements" and adjustment mechanisms of the personality are here more clearly discernible than in psychologically healthy individuals.
In the second place, an advantage in using the psychiatric clinic as a labora- tory lies in the fact that here, more than in the usual research interview, peo- ple are willing to disclose the more intimate details of their lives. Thus, studies on patients who are strongly motivated to tell the truth about them- selves may help to validate the methods used for the study of other groups.
Thirdly, the present investigation sought an approach to the very dif- ficult problem of the relation between ideology and the dimension of psy- chological health-ill health. Are people with psychological disturbances- severe enough to make them seek psychiatric help-more prejudiced or less prejudiced than other groups of people? What is the general relation between neurosis and psychosis, on the one hand, and ideology on the other? Are par- ticular patterns of ideology significantly related to any of the common psychiatric diagnostic groups?
In an attempt to answer these and other questions, I 2 I psychiatric pa- tients were studied by means of our questionnaire and other methods. Data bearing on such factors as intelligence level, education, type of complaint, and psychiatric diagnosis were obtained from the Clinic records. In addition, 16 cases were studied intensively by means of interviews and the Thematic Apperception Test, and all material previously collected by the Clinic workers was brought into the picture. A majority of the subjects also took a standard- ized test known as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. In analyzing and interpreting these data, concepts and findings from the other areas of the study as a whole were employed to the full.
B. THE NA TURE OF THE SAMPLE
The subjects, 7I women and 50 men, were all patients at the Langley Porter Clinic in San Francisco, a state institution for the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders. Violent cases and cases for permanent commitment are not admitted. At the time of the study reported in the present chapter, the inpatient department had three wards (about 45 beds) for patients requiring temporary hospitalization. Most of these cases can be classed as severe neu- roses or mild psychoses. The majority of the patients are treated in the out. . patient department, where adults are seen regularly for therapeutic inter- views and various psychological procedures.
