Horkheimer saw Nazi-susceptibility as itself a product of oppression, not innate psychology

Evidence

Since we have decided that here in Los Angeles the psychological part should be treated, I have studied the literature, under this respect [sic]. I don’t have to tell you that I don’t believe in psychology as a means to solve a problem of such seriousness. I did not change a bit my scepticism towards that discipline. Also, the term psychology as I use it in the project stands for anthropology and anthropology for the theory of man as he has developed under the conditions of antagonistic society. It is my intention to study the presence of the scheme of domination in the so-called psychological life, the instincts as well as the thoughts of men. The tendencies in people which make them susceptible to propaganda for terror, are themselves the result of terror, physical and spiritual, actual and potential oppression. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1509

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines how Horkheimer repurposed ‘psychology’ to mean anthropology — the theory of man under antagonistic society.
• SEED: Article angle: how critical theory reframed the perpetration of terror as itself an effect of terror — a counterintuitive causal inversion of victim/perpetrator psychology.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how did this view that ‘susceptibility to propaganda is itself the result of oppression’ survive or clash with the empirical authoritarian-personality work the project later produced?
• XREF: connects to: Horkheimer rejected non-class-based accounts of ideas as perpetuating suppression — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 220

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer rejected non-class-based accounts of ideas as perpetuating suppression #expands (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 220