The Institute’s character types came from political ideologies, not psychoanalytic theory

Evidence

In no sense did the character types have a psychological basis, and they were not derived from psychoanalytic considerations in any way (e.g. according to the phases of psychosexual development). On the contrary, they were formulated on the basis of ideal-typical' differences in social and political views as represented by the German ideological’ parties. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 192

Categorization

• DEFINE: Specifies exactly how ‘authoritarian character’ was operationalized — as an ideal type abstracted from anti-socialist ideology rather than a depth-psychological construct.
• DEEPTHINKING: The Institute inverted its own program: Freudian theory was supposed to underwrite the typology, yet the typology was reverse-engineered from party ideology and only later interpreted psychoanalytically.