Bio: (1903-1969) German-American psychologist and sociologist. Theodor Adorno, one of the most important representatives of the Frankfurt School, graduated from the University of Frankfurt in 1924. At the beginning of his career, he was mostly involved in musicology and composing. In 1931, he received his doctorate from the University of Frankfurt with a thesis on Kierkegaard (Sǿren Kierkegaard) and after that, he began teaching at the same university. After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, he lost his status as a professor and lost his job, so he first went to Britain in 1934, and then, in 1937, he emigrated to the United States. In 1941, he went to Los Angeles, where he collaborated most closely with Horkheimer, with whom he published the book Dialectics of Enlightenment (1972, in German 1947).

In 1949, Adorno led a team of scientists who conducted extensive empirical research among American citizens, which had an authoritarian personality as its subject. This research, published in the book Authoritarian Personality (1950), became the inevitable theoretical and methodological basis for many subsequent studies of the authoritarian structure of personality around the world. During the research, over two thousand respondents were interviewed, through surveys and in-depth interviews. The questions referred to the political and economic attitudes towards other ethnic groups, as well as the personal attitudes of the respondents. The theoretical part of the research used Freud's theory of personality development, to connect the way of raising children, which includes physical punishment and instability of parental attention and love, with the development of an authoritarian personality structure. This type of upbringing produces children's aggression towards their parents, but this aggression is sublimated in adulthood and is directed at social groups that are perceived as weak or inferior, while at the same time the person submits to authoritarian leaders, who unconsciously represent the parent figure. The consequence of this personality development is a weak ego, conformism to conventional social values, intolerance of ambivalence, cynicism, and a tendency towards superstition. To empirically measure the expression of this personality structure in individuals, the authors developed the so-called F scale (F is abbreviated from fascism because the premise was that this type of personality is prone to accept fascist values). Research has found that this type of personality is prevalent in all social groups and classes.

Adorno returned to Germany in 1949 and became a professor at the University of Frankfurt again. During this period, he was engaged in musicology, as well as studying the remnants of Nazi attitudes among the Germans. In the 1960s, he became a major figure in German sociology. In books written in that period, Adorno studied literature, music, aesthetics, history, culture, and epistemology, from the position of Critical Marxism.

Main works

Dialektik der Aufklärung (1947);

Philosophy of New Music (1949);

The Authoritarian Personality (1950);

Minima moralia (1951);

Einleitung in die Muziksoziologie (1962);

Drei Studien zu Hegel (1963);

Jargon der Eigentlichkeit (1964);

Negative Dialektik (1966);

Ästhetische Theorie (1970).

Works translated into English:

Dialectic of Enlightenment (2002, in German 1947);

The Jargon of Authenticity (1985, in German 1964);  

Hegel: Three Studies (1999, in German 1963);

Aesthetic Theory (1997, in German 1970);

Philosophy of Modern Music (1973);

Negative Dialectics (1983, in German 1966);  

The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (2006).