Page - 5 - in Rebels without a cause? - ‘Criminals’ and fascism in The Authoritarian Personality

Kranebitter 5 1945,3 and Morrow conducted in-depth interviews with 15 inmates. The results of the study were presented in Chapter XXI of the publication and received great approval from the commissioning AJC. An internal, undated editorial revision even suggested that the chapter be published as an independent monograph.4 The authors’ assumption was that prison inmates were particularly authoritarian. If high scorers in general had no integrated superego, were unable to build emotional rela- tionships with others and overcompensated weakness and passivity – ‘should we not expect that a group of prison inmates would score particularly high on our scales? This, at any rate, was the thought which led us to consider our subjects from the San Quentin Prison as a key group’ (Adorno et al., 1950: 817). Quantitative and qualitative material both seemed to confirm this null hypothesis impressively. The San Quentin respondents achieved higher than average values on almost all items. Those high scorers showing ‘undisguised hate combined with explicit readiness to suppress the outgroup by physical force “if necessary”’ (Adorno et al., 1950: 827) were termed ‘fascists’. What the questionnaires already showed was even more true of the in-depth interviews: high scorers personalised social issues, but de-personalised themselves in their interactions (Adorno et al., 1950: 844f.). Their authoritarian attitudes, emphasising obedience and conformity, contrasted strangely with their delinquent behav- iour, which had challenged the very authority of the state. Morrow noted an abstract mor- alism with high scorers, which suppressed and externalised their own feelings (Adorno et al., 1950: 847) and helped to de-realise their own actions. Thus, about two thirds of San Quentin’s sex offenders agreed with the punitive item claiming that sex offenders ought not only to be punished but publicly whipped (cf. Adorno et al., 1950: 849). This punitiv- ity hints at an ‘externalised, undeveloped superego’ (Adorno et al., 1950: 852). All these men were waiting for was an authoritarian leader. The few low scorers found among the prisoners, on the other hand, were said to be free of moralism (Adorno et al., 1950: 854) and guided instead by genuinely internalised ethics. If moralism was rigid, Morrow wrote extensively in his draft, ethics were flexible; people with genuine ethics would discuss their attitudes, moralists were afraid of any discussion (Morrow, n.d.: 44). As with other groups of respondents, high scorers and low scorers were not only on diametrically oppo- site ends of a scale, but differed fundamentally in every aspect of experience and attitude. Ultimately, however, in contrast to the extensive picture drawn of the high scorers, the low scorers among the prisoners remained under-determined. Moreover, they too were said to submit to the status quo, leading to the conclusion that in general, prisoners were anti- social pseudo-rebels, not revolutionaries. The general run of criminals are not to be thought of as genuine rebels who act according to some principle, however dissident, and whose conflict with authority is accompanied by some consideration for the weak or oppressed. [. . .] The predominant tendency is for each inmate to be ‘an island, entire in itself.’ (Adorno et al., 1950: 823f.) These then were the results. Yet they were produced in a questionable way, as the follow- ing look at the history shows.