The Social Psychology of Family and State — Critical Theory

Recapitulation: psychoanalysis and authority

Why did critical theory need psychoanalysis? Because it needed a mediating principle between material conditions and ideas, between sociology and ideology. Historical materialism gives us one model: an economic base and an ideological superstructure built on it. Psychoanalysis gives us another: the drives, libido and aggression, and the symbolic order through which they are expressed. (Marx’s own program, as the Communist Manifesto states it, seems to need some great act of human will to carry it out, and Lenin and Mao each tried to supply one. Psychoanalysis asks what human will is made of.) Joined together, the two models make a double hermeneutics of suspicion: instinctual drives on one side, historical materialism on the other.

And there was an urgent question for them to answer: why authoritarianism? Why does the proletariat support fascism? Psychoanalysis offers two answers:

the individual’s psychic authority, the super-ego, is the introjection of parental authority: we were raised to obey, and we cannot simply help it;
political authority (law, morality, the figures of religion) works as a cultural super-ego.

Freud himself pointed the way in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921): all the relations psychoanalysis had studied, he wrote, “may claim to be considered as social phenomena.” (Quotation 1.) His is a social theory of desire. So we can correlate political authority with authority in the family and authority in the psyche.

The family had already been put on the table. Friedrich Engels (ENG-els; /ˈɛŋl̩s/), in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884), argued that the historical defeat of matriarchy by patriarchy went together with the development of private property and bourgeois culture. Fromm adds a warning against reductive readings: “the relationship of super-ego to authority is dialectical.” Causation runs both ways. Political authority, and its attractive, even erotic pull, comes from the authority of the family, of the patriarch and potentially the matriarch; and the family’s authority is in turn shaped by the society around it.

The studies of authority

Authority and authoritarianism, 1929–1955

The Institute’s research on authority runs through four large projects:

Fromm and others, The Situation of the Working Class in Past and Present (begun 1929);
Studien über Autorität und Familie (SHTOO-dee-en EW-ber ow-toh-ree-TAYT oont fah-MEE-lee-eh; /ˈʃtuːdi̯ən ˈyːbɐ aʊ̯toʁiˈtɛːt ʊnt faˈmiːli̯ə/) (Studies on Authority and the Family), published in exile in Paris by Félix Alcan (fay-LEEKS ahl-KAHN; /feliks alkɑ̃/) in 1936: 850 pages, opened by three theoretical essays by Horkheimer (HORK-hy-mer; /ˈhɔʁkhaɪ̯mɐ/), Marcuse (mar-KOO-zeh; /maʁˈkuːzə/) and Fromm;
Adorno and others, The Authoritarian Personality (1950);
Pollock and others, the Gruppenexperiment (GROO-pen-ex-peh-ree-ment; /ˈɡʁʊpn̩ʔɛkspeʁiˌmɛnt/) (Group Experiment, 1955).

What they have in common

These are early sociological studies attempting to measure the psyche of a whole population. They combine qualitative interviews with quantitative surveys and questionnaires (the quantitative part was far easier than the qualitative), and they interpret the data psychoanalytically. They rely on strong tripartite typologies of character and on rankings, like the later “F-scale,” which measures how susceptible an individual is to fascist ideology. They set aside the objective causes of fascism and ask about the subjective reaction to it: why are so many people drawn to it?

Studies on Authority and the Family (1936)

Fromm’s authoritarian character

Fromm’s theoretical essay describes the authoritarian, or sado-masochistic, character. It has two sides: a desire to inflict cruelty and to dominate, and a desire to be the object of cruelty and domination. (Elon Musk fanboys, lol.) “The authoritarian structure of society,” Fromm writes, “both creates and satisfies needs which develop on the basis of sado-masochism.” (Quotation 2.)

He sorts people into a strong tripartite typology: the revolutionary character, the ambivalent character, and the authoritarian character. The typology is deliberately, openly biased: it is part of a social practice aimed at a better world.

Horkheimer, “Authority and the Family”

Horkheimer begins from a mystery: the will to subordinate oneself to authority. What he wants to explain is the capacity, conscious and unconscious, that conditions the individual at every step to conform and subordinate himself, to accept existing conditions and live in dependence on a given order and an alien will. (Quotation 3.)

Look first at the question itself. To say that people want to be dominated may presuppose that their will is free to choose. But think of slavery: people can be so totally and utterly dominated that their agency is false, and then they cannot “want” to be dominated at all.

Horkheimer’s answer is cultural. One function of the entire cultural apparatus, in any period, has been to instill in those in subordinate positions the idea that some must necessarily dominate others. The cultural apparatus is so all-encompassing that we internalize it; authority in culture as a whole works this way, not only the authority of the state. Much of the psychic apparatus of the members of a class society serves to interiorize, or at least rationalize and supplement, physical coercion; our “social nature” comes down to the memory of the force by which human beings were made sociable, and which still threatens them if they forget. (Quotation 4.)

This is the interiorization thesis, and it comes chiefly from Nietzsche (NEE-cheh; /ˈniːtsʃə/): Verinnerlichung (fair-IN-er-likh-oong; /fɛɐ̯ˈʔɪnɐlɪçʊŋ/), “inward-turning.” In Nietzsche’s story, the moral code was introduced by the weak to subordinate the strong; the strong’s desires were tamed by implementing “virtue,” and power and violence turned inward. In Freud’s version, the power of the patriarch, the father, becomes the super-ego; with it we gain conscience, and so we become moral individuals. Horkheimer does not say this is simply bad. Interiorization is a theory of how morals develop, and he insists that new qualities arise in the process: religion, morality, art, conscience and duty are largely interiorized force, external law taken into the psyche, and yet in the individual’s psychic economy they are powers that lead him not only to accept existing conditions but at times to oppose them. (Quotation 5.)

The family is the medium of interiorization. It shapes the child from his tenderest years; the child meets reality as it is reflected in the mirror of the family circle; and the family sees to it that the kind of character social life requires actually emerges, with the authority-oriented adaptability on which the bourgeois order depends. (Quotation 6.) The family perpetuates the human structure and shape, and the process is dialectical: family authority, the self, and authority in culture each act on the others.

From family authority it is a short step to political authoritarianism. Horkheimer writes that it is precisely this reified concept of authority that the modern theory of the authoritarian state applies to the supreme leader. (Quotation 7.) Fascism presents itself as a rebellion against authority, but it is itself authoritarian; and a fascist state that surpasses the bourgeois state is a totalitarian one.

Other possibilities

People tend to read critical theory as total despair. But Horkheimer hints at other possibilities. He imagines a “future-oriented family,” “a new community of spouses and children,” a different way of ordering psychology and family life, and so culture, and so authority. In it the mothers would shape their children not as repressed, dominating, authority-loving figures. Even within the bourgeois family the seed is there. In sexual love, and above all in maternal care, the growth and happiness of the other person are willed; such unions feel opposed to the hostile reality outside. So the family not only educates for authority in bourgeois society: “it also cultivates the dream of a better condition for mankind.” (Quotation 8.)

My own conclusion: I want to destroy the modern atomic family.

Concluding remarks

Authority and authoritarianism live in culture, and culture has its own dialectic of unfreedom: it is both reification and a “sign of freedom.” That raises a question about critical theory itself: where does the theory stand within the society it portrays? The great debates on culture in the 1930s, between Walter Benjamin (BEN-yah-meen; /ˈbɛnjamiːn/) and Adorno, come next.

Handout outline (Professor Gordon)

I. Recapitulation: psychoanalysis and authority

the need for psychoanalysis
a mediating principle between material conditions and ideas, sociology and ideology
the model of historical materialism: base and superstructure
the model of psychoanalysis: drives (libido and aggression) and the symbolic order
the urgent question: why authoritarianism?
two psychoanalytic answers: (a) individual’s psychic authority (the super-ego) is the introjection of parental authority; (b) political authority is a “cultural super-ego”
Freud’s own work on group psychology: a social theory of desire [quote 1]
correlating political authority with authority in both the family and the psyche
remarks on family and patriarchy anticipated by F. Engels, in The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884)
Fromm: “the relationship of super-ego to authority is dialectical” (quoted from Studien)

II. The studies of authority

A. Authority and authoritarianism in the 1930s
- Fromm, et al., The Situation of the Working Class in Past and Present (begun 1929)
- Studien über Autorität und Familie. Forschungsberichte aus dem Institut für Sozialforschung (FOR-shoongs-beh-rikh-teh owss daym in-stee-TOOT fewr zoh-TSYAHL-for-shoong; /ˈfɔʁʃʊŋsbəˌʁɪçtə aʊ̯s deːm ɪnstiˈtuːt fyːɐ̯ zoˈtsi̯aːlˌfɔʁʃʊŋ/) (Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1936): 850 pages; 3 introductory essays by Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Fromm
- Adorno, et al., The Authoritarian Personality (1950)
- Pollock, et al., Gruppenexperiment (1955)
B. Some general characteristics
- qualitative interviews
- quantitative surveys and questionnaires
- psychoanalytic interpretation of the data
- strong tripartite character typologies and rankings (e.g., the “F-scale”)

III. Studies on Authority and the Family (1936)

A. The theoretical drafts by Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Fromm
- Fromm’s theory of the authoritarian or “sado-masochistic” character [quote 2]
- strong tripartite character typology: e.g., revolutionary, ambivalent, authoritarian
B. Horkheimer’s essay, “Authority and the Family” (1936)
- the mystery of the will to subordinate oneself to authority [quote 3]
- culture as contributing to this subordination [quote 4]
- the “interiorization” thesis (chiefly from Nietzsche, Verinnerlichung) [quote 5]
- family as medium for this process of interiorization [quote 6]
- from family authority to political authoritarianism [quote 7]
- a “future oriented family,” as “a new community of spouses and children…”
- sexuality and maternal love as preserving the dream of more humane life [quote 8]

IV. Concluding remarks

authority and authoritarianism in culture
dialectics of unfreedom and unfreedom in culture
culture as both reification and “sign of freedom”
major debates on culture in the 1930s: Benjamin and Adorno [next week]

On the back: (1) Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921); (2) Fromm’s essay for Studies on Authority and the Family (1936); (3)–(8) Horkheimer, “Authority and the Family” (1936).