Adorno, Theodore
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Commentary
Adorno (1903–1969) was a German philosopher and social theorist best known for his critical theory of society. He emigrated to the USA in the 1930s. In psychology, Adorno’s name is almost synonymous with the research on authoritarian personality he conducted with colleagues Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson and Nevitt Sanford. Their book, The Authoritarian Personality, was published in 1950. The work of Adorno and colleagues was motivated by the desire to account for the rise of fascism in the 1930s. Their theory of authoritarian personality grew out of the psychoanalytic theoretical framework.