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Theodor W. Adorno

The Authoritarian Personality (Studies in Prejudice) Paperback – Abridged, November 1, 1993

by Theodor W. Adorno (Author), Else Frenkel-Brunswik (Author), Daniel J. Levinson (Author),

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Bringing together the findings of psychoanalysis and social science, this book grew out of an urgent commitment to study the origins of anti-Semitism in the aftermath of Hitler's Germany. First published in 1951, it was greeted as a monumental study blazing new trails in the investigation of prejudice. As offshoots of ethnocentrism, anti-semitism and fascism cast new and dark shadows on the world, the topic again demands study and social action. "The Authoritarian Personality" remains an important document for our time.

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Product details

Publisher : W.W. Norton Company (November 1, 1993)
Language : English
Paperback : 506 pages
ISBN-10 : 0393311120
ISBN-13 : 978-0393311129
Item Weight : 14.4 ounces
Dimensions : 5.5 x 1.25 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,629,788 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,099 in Medical Mental Illness
- #4,458 in Popular Psychology Pathologies
- #5,416 in Medical Psychology Pathologies

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RevoltAgainstTheModernWorld

Marxist academia

Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2019

I really wish there was pushback against this book when it came out. This is where a lot of this crap started in academia with pathologizing healthy normal families that are a staple to civilization and functioning societies. Cultural Marxism is a cancer on society that needs aggressively removed.

26 people found this helpful

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Dr. Thomas Ryba

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2015

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Exactly as expected

3 people found this helpful

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Atlantic

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2016

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very much up to date

6 people found this helpful

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KazingAML

An important look at a continuing problem

Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2019

Authoritarianism is on the rise across the world. It is important that we understand how it appeals to people and what sorts of people are attracted to it. Highly recommended.

7 people found this helpful

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Ted C.

An interesting, but very judgemental piece of writing.

Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2021

As a person educated in the proper use of statistics I find this work somewhat lacking. We have an author trying to find reasons for the rise of Fascism in Europe, yet unable to construct a viable scientific analysis. In view of the current crisis in reproducibility, surrounding the disciplines of sociology and psychiatry, it is small wonder that this book fails to convince. In that sense, it was ahead of it's time.

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Brendan C. Engen

A Very Relevant Study...

Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2020

Brilliant analysis. Once you read Adorno, you can’t unread him.

One person found this helpful

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Bruce P. Barten

Early studies in bad character

Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2003

The index of names on page 990 is only a page, but few people in the list would become more famous than Freud and F.D.R., one of whom was dead when a conference of American scholars in May, 1944, set out to seek solutions to crucial problems of religious and racial prejudice. The book praises those that it can describe as liberal in their attitudes:
"An extreme example of fully conscious anti-stereotypy is 5046, an executive secretary in the movie industry, in her late thirties, actively engaged in the labor movement. . . . When given the check list, she laughed and said: `Of course, one can't generalize . . . these are the stereotypes used by the anti-Semites to blame the Jews for certain faults . . . I don't think one should label any group like this . . . it is dangerous, especially in regard to the Jews,' " (p. 646).
Examples of the checklist items begin to appear on page 63, in Table I (III) Anti-Semitism Subscale "Offensive." Table 3 (III) Anti-Semitism Subscale "Attitudes" even has the suggestion, "II-24. It would be to the best interests of all if the Jews would form their own nation and keep more to themselves." (p. 65). Then there were wars in 1948, 1967, 1973, and an occupation in Lebanon in the 1980s or 1990s that begin to look like Israel and the United States were not seeing this situation in the same way as the rest of the world. Opinions are not totally antagonistic to some form of sanity throughout the entire book. Part IV, Qualitative Studies in Ideology, starting on page 601, includes Chapter XVI, Prejudice in the Interview Material, in which subjects of this study had the opportunity to express themselves in whatever manner best accentuates their own characters. Though this book was published in 1950, it has some comments that seem perfectly capable of looking ahead to the kind of policy that America is pursuing today.
"Sending them to Palestine is silly because it is not big enough. A good idea to have a country of their own, but big enough so that they can go ahead with their pursuits in a normal way, but the Jews would not be happy. They are only happy to have others work for them." (p. 631).
The first suggestion on page 631 was called "mental perversion," and the authors are quick to label "this subject's pseudorational statement on Palestine: while apparently willing to `give Jews a chance,' he simultaneously excludes any prospect of success by referring to the Jews supposedly unchangeably bad nature:" (p. 631). This seems to be particularly cruel to Jewish anti-Semites, who treat being Jewish as a family imperative which individuals attempt to escape:
"I have a cousin who was in love with me and wanted to marry me. He was more Jewish than I. I loved him, but wouldn't marry him. I told him why--because he's Jewish. He is now married to a Gentile with two children. He's more anti-Semitic than I. That's true of so many Jews--like they were lame or hunchback. They hate it or resent it." (p. 639).
I wouldn't have picked this book up if I didn't expect to find a lot of perverse mentality relating to authoritarianism. As you might expect, the authors of this book had a fit or funk whenever they had to write about anyone who expressed sympathy for Hitler in this book for being able to discipline most of Europe in a manner that might be considered punitive by people who did not share his ideals. Scoring of their psychological tests was most concerned with identifying people who were high in ethnocentricity and fascism. The references on pages 977-982 has 121 numbered items, mostly used as they were intended, as:
"83. Morgan, C.D., and Murray, H.A.: A method for investigating fantasies: the Thematic Apperception Test. `Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry' 34:289-306, 1935." (p. 981).
Psychological testing does not have the same reputation in the 21st century that it was trying to project in 1950. The Unabomber might be the most famous example of someone whose views were shaped by being involved in psychological experiments as an undergraduate at Harvard University, possibly for secret research being conducted for the CIA, though without LSD. The book HARVARD AND THE UNABOMBER by Alston Chase has an attitude about some professor Murray and the undergraduate curriculum in disillusionment that is quite a contrast to the presentation contained in THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY. Mainly due to television, I'm afraid that social scientists failed to achieve a humane society, and the greatest mental perversion maintains its hold on public opinion in spite of those who planned to work with humanities viewpoints to educate Americans out of their attitudes, like "57. Most people don't realize how much our lives are controlled by plots hatched in secret by politicians." (p. 250). Having access to actual information about how often the system has been abused has fostered an anti-political attitude that rigidly associates politics with bloodshed, particularly in and around Palestine, that may ultimately be more likely to bring out the worst nature in peoples than American missiles being able to put a thermonuclear weapon into the men's room at the Kremlin.
For people who are interested in what scales particular psychological questions are graded on, there are a number of examples given in this book, which are now considered merely prejudices of the bigoted:
"I-12. The Jewish problem . . ." (p. 65).
"II-20. Jewish millionaires . . ." (p. 66).
"5. The Negroes . . ." (pp. 105, 110).
"8. Negro musicians . . ." (pp. 105, 110).
"31. Homosexuality is a particularly rotten form of . . ." (p. 226).
"46. The . . . of the old Greeks and Romans are nursery school stuff . . ." (pp. 226, 239, 240 and no. 52 on p. 250).
"75. Sex crimes . . ." (pp. 227, 240).

16 people found this helpful

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Jan-Paul

A very important book

Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2003

Don�t be thrown of by some of the other reviews. If you start of by stating that Adorno is a Marxist and therefore must have had an agenda, your doing exactly what you have accused Adorno of. Furthermore this book wasn�t single-handedly written by Adorno, far from it, and whether or not Adorno realy was a Marxist is irellevant since Adorno�s latter ideas have little or nothing to do with this book. The Authoritarian Personality remains a very interesting study in human behaviour and nature. It has clearly been written as a reaction to the horrors of what was happening then in Nazi Germany and the authors tried to come up with a full explanation. Although I don�t doubt the integrity of authors� motives, they did obviously not succeed in there goal to come up with an extensive theory for the existence of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich, because the focussed almost entirely on the personality of the individual and disregarded the unique social en economical circumstances in Germany after WWI, that have undoubtedly played an important role as well. The fact that, in hindsight, it has become apparent that the authors have not succeeded to live up to the overambitious conclusions does, however, certainly not make The Authoritarian Personality any less interesting. A lot can still be learned about the causes of ethnocentrism from this book. It is unique in it�s scale and historical value and should not be disregarded by anyone who wants to learn more about ethnocentrism as long as you keep the books apparent short comings in mind. You should, however, also keep in mind that the criticism this book has received is certainly not allways justified at all, but caused by the fact that a lot of it's conclusions still remain valid, but these are not always pleasant for everyone.

128 people found this helpful

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Alastair McIntosh

Very important for political theology

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 14, 2019

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I first encounted Adorno's work when taking a class in social psychology at Aberdeen University in the 1970s (thank you, Mr Shepherd). It had a huge explanatory impact on me, that serves me even better in these times. Just by way of indication, here is how I am using it in something I am writing at the moment:

A landmark study of [the 60's countercultue] era was a thousand page long volume, published in 1950, by Theodore Adorno, called The Authoritarian Personality. Although since criticised on grounds of methodology, the continuing relevance of its findings gave rise to a new edition in 2019. I opened it at random as I wrote this paragraph. Brand new, with spine not broken, it fell open on page 219, and said: “Belonging to or identifying oneself with a religious body in America today does not mean that one thereby takes over the traditional Christian values of tolerance, brotherhood, and equality. On the contrary….”

3 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Excellent product and seller

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 15, 2019

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Excellent product and seller - I recommend both.

Jean-paul Lacharme

Les fondements du 'politiquement correct' ?

Reviewed in France on August 5, 2020

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En français, ‘la personnalité autoritaire’ est un gros pavé (1kg, presque 1000 pages écrit fin, au moins deux mois de lecture assidue) tentant de cerner les traits des individus formant le terreau du fascisme. Sur les 23 chapitres de l’ouvrage, seuls 4 sont de la plume d’Adorno (en auteur ou co-auteur), les autres ne sont pas de lui.

Au départ, les auteurs définissent 3 axes idéologiques : A-S (antisémitisme), E (ethnocentrisme) et PEC (politico-economic ideology). Ces axes sont orientés à partir de questionnaires très élaborés pour être posées à un grand nombre de citoyens américains anonymisés (plusieurs centaines), hommes et femmes de différents milieux sociaux identifiés par un numéro (par ex. M215 ou F319). Les questions relatives aux axes ou échelles A-S et E sont assez directes et fournissent une information peu ambiguë. Le cas de PEC est plus complexe : l’idéologie américaine se déploie entre les pôles libéraux (act. Démocrates) et conservateurs (act. Républicains) au milieu desquels on fait passer un axe droite/gauche. Mais la réduction d’un plan complexe sur un axe unique va poser pas mal de contradictions topologiques. On retrouve ici le problème soulevé par J-C Michéa : libéralisme économique (le Marché) et politique (aspect sociétal) sont les deux faces d’une même pièce qui peuvent parfois s’opposer l’un l’autre mais ne s’opposent tous deux radicalement qu’à la pensée réactionnaire de l’ancien régime, pensée absente outre Atlantique.

Les auteurs vont donner des poids numériques (1 à 6) aux réponses aux questions de façon à calculer par sommation un score (rating) pour chaque axe et ceci pour chaque individu interrogé. Ils mettent ainsi en évidence les individus à faible score (low-scoring), et ceux à score élevé (high-scoring). Le « mauvais côté » est bien sûr du côté fort, celui des individus coincés dans leurs préjugés (prejudiced) : antisémites, ethnocentriques, conservateurs. Les corrélations entre les 3 axes sont établies : elles ne sont pas nécessairement positives. Un individu peut être « high in A-S and E, low in PEC ». Dans le cas de groupes d’individus, les moyennes, écart-types et pouvoir discriminant (D.P.) sont calculés à des fins de comparaisons inter-groupes.

Ces trois axes étant ainsi définis, un 4ème est posé de la même façon que les précédents : c’est l’échelle F comme ‘fasciste’. Le problème, c’est ici que les questions qui en permettent l’évaluation sont un peu trop explicites et peut amener la personne interrogée à s’autocensurer. Ce qui intéresse les auteurs c’est de remonter au vécu des individus : rapport au père et à la mère dans la petite enfance, rapport au sexe, à l’argent et à la religion notamment. La démarche globale s’appuie explicitement sur la théorie psychanalytique freudienne qui était à la mode à l’époque.

Pour cela, les auteurs utilisent deux techniques. La première nommé TAT ou ‘thematic aperception test’ utilise l’analyse du commentaire des individus devant des photos représentant des situations ambiguës (il faut raconter une histoire). La seconde utilise la réponse à des questions particulières (PQ ou projectives questions) du genre ‘quels sont les pires crimes qu’une personne puisse commettre ?’. Ces deux techniques arrivent en complément des évaluations des échelles A-S, E, PEC et F. Les interviews sont souvent rapportées ce qui enrichit fortement l’ouvrage. Actuellement et si c’était à refaire, le bricolage des quatre échelles serait utilement remplacé par des méthodes de calcul comme l’AFC faisant apparaître automatiquement les axes principaux du nuage de données.

Le résultat de ce travail est complexe, les auteurs ne s’en cachent pas. Ils ont sans doute pensé avoir mis en évidence ce qu’ils voulaient précisément démontrer au départ en définissant a priori le champ idéologique comme partagé entre le bien (la démocratie, la science moderne) et le mal (la pensée dominante des sociétés traditionnelles patriarcales hiérarchisées désormais gratifiée globalement du terme de ‘préjugé’). Le contexte politique du début de la guerre froide était relativement facile à saisir. D’un côté le monde ‘libre’ totalement dominé par les USA, de l’autre le stalinisme encore auréolé de sa victoire sur l’Allemagne, enfin le monstre nazi, l’image même du mal absolu que personne ne pouvait plus défendre, définitivement écrasé. Les auteurs n’ont pas jugé utile d’étudier ou même de documenter la pertinence des préjugés définissant les ‘high scores’ (par ex. Henri Delassus, Bernard Lazare ou Michael A. Hoffman).

Depuis 70 ans, ce contexte s’est fortement brouillé. Il est évident par exemple qu’Israël offre aujourd’hui un milieu idéologique très ethnocentrique (E high scored), l’antisémitisme y est remplacé par une version anti-palestinienne agressive (A-S high scored), et l’échelle F doit y être affectée de la même façon. Ailleurs en occident, la révolution arc-en-ciel (féminisme, LGBTisme, antiracisme) a porté depuis quelques dizaines d’années les idées archi-minoritaires des ‘unprejudiced low scored’ en position largement dominante et l’attitude de ses représentants soutenus par les plus hautes institutions internationales est devenue souvent intolérante et violente. Ce renversement de situation ne peut être expliqué par les hypothèses soutenant cette étude. Certains auteurs postulent d’ailleurs que l’ouvrage est l’une des justifications du ‘politiquement correct’ contemporain (Michael Minnicino). Ce travail est donc scientifiquement très critiquable, mais il n’en est pas moins extrêmement sérieux et même tout à fait remarquable.

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