The Authoritarian Personality
Check out the nine so-called "personality variables" of "the authoritarian personality-type" from the Frankfurt School's sociological studies of the 1940's. After you read them, apply these categories to just about anyone you like in this country today. Good choices include anyone in the Administration and the leaders of the Christian Right:
CONVENTIONALISM. Rigid adherence to conventional, middle-class values.
AUTHORITARIAN SUBMISSION. Submissive, uncritical attitude towards idealized moral authorities of the ingroup.
ANTI-INTRACEPTION. Opposition to the subjective, imaginative, the tender-minded.
SUPERSTITION AND STEREOTYPY. The belief in mystical determinants of the individual's fate; the disposition to think in rigid categories.
POWER AND "TOUGHNESS." Preoccupation with the dominance-submission, strong-weak, leader-follower dimension; identification with power figures; overemphasis upon the conventionalized attributes of the ego; exaggerated assertion of strength and toughness.
DESTRUCTIVENESS AND CYNICISM. Generalized hostility, vilification of the human.
PROJECTIVITY. The disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things go on in the world; the projection outwards of unconscious emotional impulses.
SEX. Exaggerated concern with sexual "goings-on."
(taken from Martin Jay's The Dialectical Imagination).
CONVENTIONALISM. Rigid adherence to conventional, middle-class values.
AUTHORITARIAN SUBMISSION. Submissive, uncritical attitude towards idealized moral authorities of the ingroup.
ANTI-INTRACEPTION. Opposition to the subjective, imaginative, the tender-minded.
SUPERSTITION AND STEREOTYPY. The belief in mystical determinants of the individual's fate; the disposition to think in rigid categories.
POWER AND "TOUGHNESS." Preoccupation with the dominance-submission, strong-weak, leader-follower dimension; identification with power figures; overemphasis upon the conventionalized attributes of the ego; exaggerated assertion of strength and toughness.
DESTRUCTIVENESS AND CYNICISM. Generalized hostility, vilification of the human.
PROJECTIVITY. The disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things go on in the world; the projection outwards of unconscious emotional impulses.
SEX. Exaggerated concern with sexual "goings-on."
(taken from Martin Jay's The Dialectical Imagination).
posted by James at 9:47 PM
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