“Thirst for Obedience”: A Freudian Analysis of the Father-Leader in Adorno and Beauvoir
Theodor W. Adorno’s 1951 essay, “A Freudian analysis of Fascist Propaganda,” is a fertileground for comparison with the work of feminist existential philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, which was published just a couple of years earlier in 1949. The following exposition of Adorno’s essay and the “Introductory" and “Independent Woman” chapters in Beauvoir’s The Second Sex examines how Adorno’s application of Freudian psychoanalytic theory of mass psychology and the modern authoritarian state aligns with Beauvoir’s theoretical dialectic of the man as transcendent Subject versus the woman as immanent Other. The connective thread in both contexts is a hegemonic teleology of dominance. This hegemony is the apparatus and function of both predominately male fascist dictators and sexist social actors who pander to collective entities of followers captivated by the ostensible auspices of the Father-Leader. The following use of the term Father-Leader will be used as a symbolic gesture and catch-all term to simplify the analogy between Adorno’s fascist dictator and the historically paternalistic man. The symbolic authority of the Father-Leader lies in his ability to generate an affect-driven, hypnotic libidinal bond through the mechanisms of identification and idealization with a mass ancillary entity, in this case either a fascist following of a nation or a large majority of the population, thus maintaining social and political privilege, influence, and control.