Page - 7 - in Rebels without a cause? - ‘Criminals’ and fascism in The Authoritarian Personality

Kranebitter 7 households (Schmidt, 1948: 47f.), it may be concluded that the sample was also socially distorted in relation to the prisoner population. Even though they did not directly sub- sume the San Quentin group under the group of ‘Working Class Men’, the authors’ repeatedly claimed that it was predominantly working class (Adorno et al., 1950: 173, 180, 188, 259, 287), with Adorno himself, noticing a difference to other proletarian groups, terming it a ‘Lumpenproletariat’ (Adorno et al., 1950: 638). In fact, the San Quentin group appears not to have been particularly proletarian. Moreover, the greater number of murderers among the interview partners for in-depth interviews suggests that spectacular cases were specially selected for these interviews. One of the 12 interviewees had an IQ of only 48 (Adorno et al., 1950: 818), others had gruesomely dazzling crime stories to tell such as 21-year-old Jim, interestingly enough categorised as a low scorer, who had murdered an older woman under the influence of drugs. ‘The victim’s body showed that he kissed and chewed her breasts. . . She was totally unknown to him’ (Adorno et al., 1950: 871). Whether or not Jim’s victim represented – as Morrow sus- pects – his mother and, consequently, Jim had acted out his oedipal conflict with a mother substitute, the case (like other cases) can hardly be regarded as representative of the San Quentin population. The process for selecting interviewees by the prison’s psychiatric department also demands attention. The key figure in this regard was David G. Schmidt, the chief psy- chiatrist at the San Quentin Penitentiary. Having started as department head in 1932 (Schmidt, 1948: 27), he had begun his duty by restructuring the overcrowded psychiatric department. The apparently reform-inspired improvement in conditions at San Quentin was achieved at the high cost of creating a category of incorrigible criminals who, from then on, received the undivided attention of the psychiatrists. Schmidt’s tasks also included making instant diagnoses and prognoses, including ‘recommendations on them prior to their appearance before the Board of Prison Terms and Paroles [. . .] for parole and sentence consideration. We are proud of our percentage of successful recommenda- tions.’ (Schmidt, 1948: 29). The psychiatric ‘recommendations’ not only served the pris- oners but also the state authorities in deciding their fate. This meant that Schmidt played a huge role in the fate of the prisoners, who would certainly have been aware of this. Nevertheless, Schmidt persistently framed his work as providing almost altruistic aid to the prisoner in his involuntary struggles. At a time when the death penalty by gassing was not infrequently practiced in San Quentin – Schmidt himself reports having observed 200 gassings – this discourse was framed as a ‘reform’ even if it involved the introduc- tion of psychiatric treatments such as insulin shock therapy, electro-shock therapy for psychotics and the treatment of syphilitics with typhoid and malaria infections (Schmidt, 1948: 32). It was this psychiatric unit, equipped with a considerable amount of power over the prisoners – from a tentative immediate diagnosis upon admission to recommendations to the probation committee – that was now not only assigned the task of compiling the described sample but also of distributing the questionnaires and monitoring their responses. Morrow was not present when the questionnaires were distributed. This emerges from a ‘memorandum’ written by Daniel Levinson (for the questionnaire mate- rial) and William Morrow (for the clinical material), dated January 17, 1946, with the handwritten addition ‘Dr. Adorno’ (Levinson and Morrow, 1946). Here, the distribution