Psychoanalytic theorists explained fascism’s appeal via unconscious personality needs.

Evidence

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) in The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933) and Erich Fromm (1900–1980) in Escape from Freedom (1941) both addressed the question of what psychological characteristics led followers to flock to right-wing political movements. The theme that prejudice and anti-Semitism arose from unconscious personality needs was further developed by Adorno and his colleagues at UC Berkeley in one of the first major texts in political psychology: The Authoritarian Personality (1950). — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 100

Categorization

• XREF: Authoritarian personality theory connects to later work on right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation that recurs through this book. — connects to: Fascism’s psychology emerges first in childhood peer cruelty — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 215; Adorno linked phenomenology’s reified premises to fascism as twin terminal crises. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 267; Adorno grounded his analysis of fascist propaganda in Freud’s group psychology. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 1578 (+3 more)