Gesammelte Werke

»character neuroses« which – as has been recognized by modern psychoanalysis – are most difficult to cure and then only through treatment over a long period of time. Under the prevailing conditions democratic leadership cannot hope to change basically the personalities of those on whose support antidemocratic propaganda depends. It has to concentrate on the enlightenment of attitudes, ideologies, and behaviors, making the best possible use of the insights of depth psychology, but it should not venture into pseudotherapeutic undertakings. Of course, such a program has something of the vicious circle, since a substantial piercing of the powerful defense mechanisms of the fascist character can actually be hoped for only through the full-fledged analysis which is out of the question. Nevertheless, attempts will have to be made. There are, to use Freud's phrase, »lever effects« in psychological dynamics. They occur seldom enough in the everyday life of the individual, but democratic leadership, which need not be content with psychological transference, but can rely on the resources of objective truth and rational interest, may be in a favorable position to induce them.
    In this connection our knowledge of the agitators' devices may prove helpful. We might derive from them, as it were,
vaccines
against antidemocratic indoctrination which are more powerful than the mere reiteration of proofs of the falsity of various anti-Semitic allegations. A pamphlet, or manual, which was developed jointly by Max Horkheimer and the author, describes each one of the standard devices, the difference between their overt contentions and their hidden intentions, and the specific psychological mechanisms which foster the subjects' responses to the standard stimuli. The manual is as yet in a preliminary stage and there still lies ahead the extremely difficult task of translating the objective findings on which it is based into a language that can be easily understood without diluting its substance. This task must be accomplished through trial and error, through the testing of the manual's understandability and effectiveness with various groups and by continuous improvements, before the manual can be distributed on a large scale. As a matter of fact, premature distribution may do harm rather than good. What is important for us here, however, is the approach as such, not its final elaboration. Its merits seem to lie in the fact that it combines the uncompromising truth principle with a real chance to reach some nerve points of antidemocratism. This it accomplishes through the elucidation of just those subjective factors which prevent the realization of truth. The least that can be said in favor of our approach is that it will induce people to reflect about their own attitudes and opinions, which they usually take for granted, without falling into a moralizing or sermonizing attitude. Technically, the task is facilitated by the very limited number of the agitators' devices.
    Our approach will doubtlessly call forth quite a few weighty objections from both the political and the psychological direction. Politically, it may be argued that the power interests behind contemporary reaction are much too strong as to be overcome by any »change of mind.« It may also be said that modern political mass-movements seem to develop a sociological momentum of their own which is completely impervious to introspective methods. The first objection cannot be fully countered on the basis of leader-mass relations but has to be seen in connection with the constellations within the field of power-politics proper. The second political objection would not be valid under present-day circumstances, though it would be important in an
acute
prefascist situation. It tends to underestimate the subjective element in social developments and to make a fetish of the objective tendency. The sociological momentum can certainly not be hypostatized. The assumption of a group mentality is largely mythological. Freud has pointed out very convincingly that the forces which assume the function of an irrational cement of groups, as stressed by writers such as Gustave LeBon, are actually effective within each individual participating in the group and cannot be regarded as entities, independent of individual psychological dynamics.
    Since the emphasis of our approach lies mainly on the psychological level, its psychological critique deserves a more detailed discussion. The argument