Under the Shadow of The Authoritarian Personality: Elias, Fromm, and Alternative Social Psychologies of Authoritarianism

  • Tim J. Berard
Chapter

Abstract

Norbert Elias, Erich Fromm, and Theodor Adorno all crossed paths at the University of Frankfurt in the pivotal period of the early 1930s, all were haunted by Nazism, and each produced remarkable chapters in the social psychology of authoritarianism. Adorno’s (co-authored) The Authoritarian Personality (1950) was the most influential, but perhaps only at the cost of downplaying or hiding underlying theoretical and political interests during a period of significant professional constraints. Currently none of these contributions enjoys much attention, despite enduring academic, political, and national security interests in understanding the origins and nature of popular political ideologies characterized by uncritical submission to militant and intolerant politics. This chapter surveys the neglected social psychologies of authoritarianism offered by Elias and Fromm and offers comparisons and contrasts between these two contributions, and also the more famous publication: The Authoritarian Personality. Elias’s The Germans is revealed to have many overlooked and lasting virtues, especially its abilities to avoid troubling reifications and to offer insights that more easily transcend the particular traditions of psychoanalysis, Marxism, and positivism.

Keywords

Critical Theory Social Character Personality Structure Social Thought Marxist Theory 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Adorno, T. 1969. “Scientific Experiences of a European Scholar in America.” In The Intellectual Migration; Europe and America, 1930–1960, edited by D. Fleming and B. Bailyn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
  2. Adorno, T., E. Frenkel-Brunswick, D. Levinson, and R. N. Sanford. 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper & Brothers.Google Scholar
  3. Altemeyer, B. 1981. Right-Wing Authoritarianism. Winnipeg, Canada: University of Manitoba Press.Google Scholar
  4. Aronowitz, S. 1972. Introduction to Critical Theory: Selected Essays, edited by M. Horkheimer. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
  5. Bahr, E. 1984. “The Anti-Semitism Studies of the Frankfurt School: The Failure of Critical Theory.” In Foundations of the Frankfurt School of Social Research, edited by J. Marcus and Z. Tar. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.Google Scholar
  6. Blum, A., and P. McHugh. 1971. “Social Ascription of Motives.” American Sociological Review 36: 98–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  7. Bogner, A. 1987. “Elias and the Frankfurt School.” Theory, Culture, and Society 4: 249–285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. Bottomore, T. 1984. The Frankfurt School. New York: Tavistock.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Bronner, E., and D. Kellner, eds. 1989. Critical Theory and Society: A Reader. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
  10. Burston, D. 1991. The Legacy of Erich Fromm. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. Cavalletto, G. 2007. Crossing the Psycho-Social Divide: Freud, Weber, Adorno, and Elias. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.Google Scholar
  12. Demm, E. 1987. “Max and Alfred Weber and the Verein für Sozialpolitik.” In Max Weber and his Contemporaries, edited by W. Mommsen and J. Osterhammel. London: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
  13. Dubiel, H. 1985. Theory and Politics: Studies in the Development of Critical Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  14. Elias, N. (1939) 1994. The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners and State Formation and Civilization. Translation, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
  15. Elias, N. 1987. “The Retreat of Sociologists into the Present.” In Modern German Sociology, edited by V. Meja, D. Misgeld and N. Stehr. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
  16. Elias, N. (1989) 1996. The Germans: Power Struggles and the Development of Habitus in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, edited by M. Schröter. Translation, New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
  17. Eysenck, H. J. 1953. Uses and Abuses of Psychology. Baltimore, MD: Penguin.Google Scholar
  18. Ferrarotti, F. 1984 “The Struggle of Reason against Total Bureaucratization.” In Foundations of the Frankfurt School of Social Research, edited by J. Marcus and Z. Tar. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.Google Scholar
  19. Fletcher, J. 1997. Violence & Civilization: An Introduction to the Work of Norbert Elias Malden, MA: Polity.Google Scholar
  20. Freud, S. (1915) 1980. “Zeitgemäβes über Krieg und Tod.” In Sigmund Freud-Studienausgabe. Vol. IX: Fragen der Gesellschaft: Ursprunge der Religion. Reprint, Frankfurt: S. Fischer.Google Scholar
  21. Freud, S. (1921–1922) 1989. Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Translation, New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
  22. Freud, S. (1927) 1975. The Future of an Illusion. Translation, New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
  23. Freud, S. (1929) 1961. Civilization and Its Discontents. Translation, New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
  24. Freud, S. (1933) 1965. New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Translation, New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
  25. Fromm, E. (1929–1939) 1984. The Working Class in Weimar Germany: A Psychological and Sociological Study. Edited by W. Bonss. Translation, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
  26. Fromm, E. (1932) 1970a. “The Method and Function of an Analytic Social Psychology.” In The Crisis of Psychoanalysis. Translation, Greenwich, CT: Fawcett.Google Scholar
  27. Fromm, E. (1932) 1970b. “Psychoanalytic Characterology and Its Relevance for Social Psychology.” In The Crisis of Psychoanalysis. Translation, Greenwich, CT: Fawcett.Google Scholar
  28. Fromm, E. (1934) 1970c. “The Theory of Mother Right and Its Relevance for Social Psychology.” In The Crisis of Psychoanalysis. Translation, Greenwich, CT: Fawcett.Google Scholar
  29. Fromm, E. 1941. Escape from Freedom. New York: Avon.Google Scholar
  30. Fulbrook, M. 2007a. “Changing States, Changing Selves: Generations in the Third Reich and the GDR.” In Un-Civilizing Processes? Excess and Transgression in German Society and Culture: Perspectives Debating with Norbert Elias. New York: Rodopi.Google Scholar
  31. Fulbrook, M., ed. 2007b. Un-Civilizing Processes? Excess and Transgression in German Society and Culture: Perspectives Debating with Norbert Elias. New York: Rodopi.Google Scholar
  32. Funk, R. 2000. “Erich Fromm’s Life and Work.” In Erich Fromm and Critical Criminology, edited by K. Anderson and R. Quinney. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
  33. Gerth, H., and C. W. Mills. 1964. Character and Social Structure: The Psychology of Social Institutions. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.Google Scholar
  34. Habermas, J. 1984. “The Frankfurt School in New York.” In Foundations of the Frankfurt School of Social Research, edited by J. Marcus and Z. Tar. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.Google Scholar
  35. Held, D. 1980. Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
  36. Hennis, W. 1988. Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction. Boston: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
  37. Honigman, J. 1967. Personality in Culture. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
  38. Honneth, A. 1987. “Critical Theory.” In Social Theory Today, edited by A. Giddens and J. Turner. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
  39. Horkheimer, M. (1931) 1989. “The State of Contemporary Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research.” In Critical Theory and Society: A Reader, edited by S. Bronner and D. Kellner. Translation, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
  40. Horkheimer, M. (1936a) 1972. “Authority and the Family.” In Critical Theory: Selected Essays. Translation, New York: Herder and Herder.Google Scholar
  41. Horkheimer, M., ed. 1936b. Studien űber Autorität und Familie: Forschungsberichte aus dem Institute fűr Sozialforschung. Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan.Google Scholar
  42. Horkheimer, M. 1993. “Reason Against Itself: Some Remarks on Enlightenment.” Theory, Culture, and Society 10: 79–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  43. Jacoby, R. 1975. Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
  44. Jay, M. 1973. The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for Social Research 1923–1950. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
  45. Jay, M. 1985. Permanent Exiles: Essays on the Intellectual Migration from Germany to America. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
  46. Kalberg, S. 1992. “The German Sonderweg De-Mystified: A Sociological Biography of a Nation.” Theory, Culture, and Society 9: 111–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  47. Kalberg, S. 1994. Max Weber’s Comparative-Historical Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
  48. Kaplan, B. 1961. Studying Personality Cross-Culturally. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
  49. Kettler, D., and C. Loader. 2001. Sociology as Political Education: Karl Mannheim in the University. New York: Transaction.Google Scholar
  50. Kettler, D., V. Meja, and N. Stehr. 1984. Karl Mannheim. New York: Tavistock.Google Scholar
  51. Kilminster, R. 2007. Norbert Elias: Post-Philosophical Sociology. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
  52. Kim, K., and T. Berard. 2009. “Typification in Society and Social Science: The Continuing Relevance of Schutz’s Social Phenomenology.” Human Studies 32 (3): 263–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  53. Kurzweil, E. 1984. “The Uses of Psychoanalysis in Critical Theory and Structuralism.” In Foundations of the Frankfurt School of Social Research, edited by J. Marcus and Z. Tar. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.Google Scholar
  54. Landis, B., and E. Tauber. 1971. In The Name of Life: Essays in Honor of Erich Fromm. New York: Hold, Rinehart, and Winston.Google Scholar
  55. Lepsius, M. R. 1987. “Sociology in the Interwar Period: Trends in Development and Criteria for Evaluation.” In Modern German Sociology, edited by V. Meja, D. Misgeld and N. Stehr. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
  56. Lipset, S. M. 1981. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics, expanded ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
  57. Maccoby, M. 1982. “Social Character vs. The Productive Ideal: The Contribution and Contradiction in Fromm’s View of Man.” Praxis International 2 (1): 70–83.Google Scholar
  58. Mannheim, K. (1951) 1998. “The Pattern of Democratic Personality.” In German Sociology, edited by U. Gerhardt. New York: Columbia University Press. First published in Mannheim’s Freedom, Power, Democratic Planning. Reprint, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
  59. McLaughlin, N. 1996. “Nazism, Nationalism, and the Sociology of Emotions: Escape From Freedom Revisited.” Sociological Theory 14: 241–261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  60. Melden, A. I. 1961. Free Action. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
  61. Michels, R. (1911) 1959. Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
  62. Morrow, R. 1994. “Mannheim and the Early Frankfurt School: The Weber Reception of Rival Traditions of Critical Sociology.” In The Barbarism of Reason: Max Weber and the Twilight of the Enlightenment, edited by A. Horowitz and T. Maley. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
  63. Nietzsche, F. (1887) 1967. On the Genealogy of Morals. In On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, edited by W. Kaufmann. Translation, New York: Random House.Google Scholar
  64. Owen, D. 1991. “Autonomy and ‘Inner Distance’: A Trace of Nietzsche in Weber.” History of the Human Sciences 4 (1): 79–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  65. Owen, D. 1994. Maturity and Modernity: Nietzsche, Weber, Foucault, and the Ambivalence of Reason. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
  66. Parsons, T. 1961. “Social Structure and the Development of Personality.” In Studying Personality Cross-Culturally, edited by B. Kaplan. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
  67. Peters, R. S. 1960. The Concept of Motivation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
  68. Pitkin, H. 1987. “Rethinking Reification.” Theory and Society 16: 263–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  69. Popper, K. 1968. Conjectures and Refutations. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
  70. Scheler, M. (1912) 1976. Ressentiment. Translation, New York, NY: Schocken.Google Scholar
  71. Schmitt, C. (1922) 2004. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Translation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
  72. Singer, M. 1961. “A Survey of Culture and Personality Theory and Research.” In Studying Personality Cross-Culturally, edited by B. Kaplan. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
  73. Slater, P. 1977. Origin and Significance of the Frankfurt School: A Marxist Perspective. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
  74. Stirk, P. 2000. Critical Theory, Politics, and Society: An Introduction. New York: Pinter.Google Scholar
  75. Stone, W., G. Lederer, and R. Christie, eds. 1993. Strength and Weakness: The Authoritarian Personality Today. New York: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
  76. Tar, Z. 1984. Introduction to Foundations of the Frankfurt School of Social Research, edited by J. Marcus and Z. Tar. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.Google Scholar
  77. van Krieken, R. 1998. Norbert Elias. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
  78. Warren, M. 1994. “Nietzsche and Weber: When Does Reason Become Power?” In The Barbarism of Reason: Max Weber and the Twilight of the Enlightenment, edited by A. Horowitz and T. Maley. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
  79. Weber, A. (1946) 1987. “Today and the Task.” In German Sociology, edited by U. Gerhardt. Translation, New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
  80. Weber, M. 1917. “Der Sinn der ‘Wertfreiheit’ der Soziologischen und Ökonomischen Wissenschaften.” Logos VII, 40–88. Translated as “The Meaning of ‘Ethical Neutrality’ in Sociology and Economics.” In The Methodology of the Social Sciences. Translated and edited by E. Shils and H. Finch, 1–47. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
  81. Weber, M. 1946. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Edited by H. Gerth and C. W. Mills. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  82. Weber, M. (1904–05) 2008. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism with Other Writings on the Rise of the West. Edited by S. Kalberg. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  83. Wheatland, T. 2009. The Frankfurt School in Exile. Translation, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
  84. Wiggershaus, R. 1995. The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  85. Wilkinson, R. 1972. The Broken Rebel: A Study in Culture, Politics, and Authoritarian Character. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© François Dépelteau and Tatiana Savoia Landini 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  • Tim J. Berard

There are no affiliations available

Personalised recommendations