Written in 1951, this essay systematizes Theodor Adorno's extensive work in the 1940s, informed by psychoanalysis, on the mass psychological base of fascism. It is important for us because it asks for the socio-psychological conditions of the possibility (and also the limits) of modern authoritarian states. The essay further demonstrates the interrelationship of the Frankfurt critique of mass culture and the Institute's fascism theory. Adorno was to call both the culture industry and fascist propaganda "psychoanalysis in reverse."
