Freud explains mass formation by mechanism rather than by contemptuous essence

Evidence

The method of Freud’s book constitutes a dynamic interpretation of Le Bon’s description of the mass mind and a critique of a few dogmatic concepts - magic words, as it were - which are employed by Le Bon and other pre-analytic psychologists as though they were keys for some startling phenomena. Foremost among these concepts is that of suggestion which, incidentally, still plays a large role as a stop-gap in popular thinking about the spell exercised by Hitler and his like over the masses. Freud does not challenge the accuracy of Le Bon’s well-known characterizations of masses as being largely de-individualized, irrational, easily influenced, prone to violent action and altogether of a regressive nature. What distinguishes him from Le Bon is rather the absence of the traditional contempt for the masses which is the thema probandum of most of the older psychologists. Instead of inferring from the usual descriptive findings that the masses are inferior per se and likely to remain so, he asks in the spirit of true enlightenment: what makes the masses into masses? — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 181

Categorization

• XREF: This is the analytic move the reader wants to replicate: turning a descriptive typology into a causal mechanism question — the same move Adorno himself makes against the culture industry. — connects to: Freud reproduced the bourgeois contempt of instinct he set out to dismantle
• DEFINE: ‘Suggestion’ identified as a dogmatic stop-gap concept whose explanatory work Freud displaces with a structural question.