Authoritarianism from Berlin to Berkeley: On Social Psychology and History

Emerging conceptions of authoritarianism, their transformation, and their fate are traced through the recent history of social psychology. The issue was first formulated around 1930 by Wilhelm Reich in an attempt to combine Freudian and Marxist ideas into an explanation of political developments in Germany. Erich Fromm pursued the idea further in the analysis of a questionnaire study of German workers, and later in his book Escape from Freedom (1941). Subsequent work by the Frankfurt Institute merged with research at Berkeley and produced The Authoritarian Personality (1950). Initially received enthusiastically, the theory gradually succumbed under the impact of two different lines of attack. This series of transformations in changing historical contexts points both to the need for a better historical understanding of our discipline and to some unresolved questions in our approach to its subject matter.