The Institut reversed its early optimism about broken family authority enabling social change

Evidence

Miss Komarovsky articulated her own viewpoint more than that of Horkheimer and the other central Institut figures when she wrote: “Even a partial breakdown of parental authority in the family as an effect of the depression might tend to increase the readiness of coming generations to accept social change.” ”’ The longer the Institut remained in America, the more it became convinced that the opposite was true. … Here, as in so many other instances, the Frankfurt School anticipated later issues of widespread interest. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 438

Categorization

• XREF: Foreshadows the authoritarian-personality work of the forties; relates to Adorno’s later theory that weakened family authority enables fascist identification.