Rebels without a cause? ‘Criminals’ and fascism inThe Authoritarian Personality

Abstract

An important empirical basis for the interpretations of Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson and R. Nevitt Sanford in The Authoritarian Personality (TAP) were questionnaires and in-depth interviews conducted by William R. Morrow with prisoners at California’s San Quentin prison. A reconstruction of the historical approach exposes serious methodological shortcomings, some of which Morrow openly addressed in memoranda, revealing that the supposedly particularly authoritarian attitude of the prisoners was due, among other things, to their submission to the psychiatric authority in the authoritarian situation of the prison and due to the conditions of a hierarchical prisoner society. In TAP, the empirically inadequate survey was interpreted primarily in the context of psychoanalytic literature on crime at that time, in particular Robert Lindner’s Rebel Without A Cause, whose theory of pseudo rebellion permeated TAP. Focusing on the shortcomings of TAP, this article argues, enables its inspiring insights to be appreciated.

Writing national histories of sociology: Methods, approaches and visions

“…Andreas Kranebitter has recently published on two cases of the use of methods, and specifically on the survey instrument. The first is on methods used for the sociological study of genocide, particularly with Nazi concentration camp survivors and former members of the SS (Kranebitter, 2017), and the second on the related issue of the impact of problematic methods on the theoretical conclusions of Adorno et al's (1950) The Authoritarian Personality (see Kranebitter, 2020). Both studies were based on archival research into notes and correspondence regarding the methods used in sociological research.…”