Horkheimer secured control by cultivating individual, contradictory special relationships with each staff member

Evidence

Together with the fixation which the individual members of staff had on Horkheimer, who encouraged these fixations by giving each of them individually the impression that he had a special relationship with him, and by giving inconsistent and sometimes even intentionally contradictory information to each of them, this was a classic example of the maxim `divide and rule’ being applied. Under conditions such as these, there was no way for a crisis to be resolved rationally on a common basis. Crises could only be resolved at an unnecessarily high psychological cost and, in the end, only according to the principle that some people must be asked to make sacrifices so that others, or rather others’ ability to fulfil the theoretical task, could be saved. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 284

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This diagnoses the institutional mechanism of the very authoritarian personality the Institute theorized, turned back onto the Institute itself.
• XREF: Connects directly to later chapters’ material on Horkheimer’s patriarchal conduct and Fromm’s suppressed worker study.