Bettelheim and Janowitz framed prejudice as a relief valve for uncontrolled tensions

Evidence

The study of war veterans, also psychoanalytically oriented, differed from The Authoritarian Personality in two main points. First, the positive significance of prejudice for the prejudiced person was emphasized more strongly and treated with more sympathy. Secondly, society’s established institutions, including the army, were treated as something positive which was taken for granted by those who had no sense of resentment, and rejected by those who neither had any control of themselves nor were capable of being controlled by others, and who relied on ethnic intolerance to give vent to their tensions. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1828

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘prejudice as functional relief’ view contrasts sharply with Adorno’s authoritarian-character theory of prejudice — a productive theoretical divergence worth tracking through the Frankfurt School’s internal debates.