authoritarian "syndrome" and could therefore be dismissed without arguing the pros and cons of these positions or considering the possibility that many people, for example, may have had good reason to hold a "conception of a threatening and dangerous environment" or to reject a middle-class conception of easygoing parental discipline.

The mode of summary judgment and dismissal came too easily to the authors of The Authoritarian Personality. Without bothering to present any evidence for their view, they assumed that a woman with a "self-image of conventional femininity" developed an "underlying bitterness" ("since the home does not provide her with satisfactory forms of expression"), which often took "deviously destructive forms." The Authoritarian Personality revealed more about the enlightened prejudices of the professional classes than about authoritarian prejudices among the common people. The authors found evidence of "authoritarian submission" in an affirmative answer to the proposition that "science has its place, but there are many important things that can never possibly be understood by the human mind." They saw "authoritarian aggression" in the belief that "an insult to our honor must always be punished" or that "if people would talk less and work more, everybody would be better off." They detected "anti-intraception" in the view that "nowadays more and more people are prying into matters that should remain personal and private." By identifying the "liberal personality" as the antithesis of the authoritarian personality, they equated mental health with an approved political position. They defended liberalism not on the grounds that liberal policies served the ends of justice and freedom but on the grounds that other positions had their roots in personal pathology. They enlarged the definition of liberalism to include a critical attitude toward all forms of authority, faith in science, relaxed and nonpunitive child-rearing practices, and flexible conceptions of sex roles. This expansive, largely cultural definition of liberalism made it easy to interpret adherence to liberalism as a "psychological matter."

The replacement of moral and political argument by reckless psychologizing not only enabled Adorno and his collaborators to dismiss unacceptable opinions on medical grounds; it led them to set up an impossible standard of political health—one that only members of a self-constituted cultural vanguard could consistently meet. In order to establish their emotional "autonomy," the subjects of their research had to hold the

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