CONTRADICTION, CRITIQUE, AND DIALECTIC IN ADORNO A ...

5.2 The mechanism of projection
The mechanism that Adorno and Horkheimer describe as bringing about the loss
of external reality discussed above is “paranoid projection”—the mechanism at work in
the formation of paranoia, one of the narcissistic neuroses. 195
Adorno and Horkheimer’s discussion of paranoid projection follows two lines of
thought. The first identifies projection with a mechanism by which the subject imputes
the formal structure of its own mind to reality as a whole, so that external reality appears
as a mirror image of the subject. This is the mechanism that creates the epistemic
estrangement from external reality discussed above. The second train of thought
identifies paranoid projection with the mechanism at work in fascist violence 196 against
the Jews, homosexuals, Roma, women, and other persecuted groups. 197 On the basis of
Adorno and Horkheimer’s text alone, and without recourse to Freud’s analysis of
projection, it is not immediately evident how these two phenomena result from a single
195 Nosographically, the illnesses that Freud called “narcissistic neuroses” in earlier writings
correspond to the functional psychoses (i.e. those not caused by somatic lesions, see Laplanche and
Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis (London: The Hogarth Press, 1973), 258). These include
paranoia, schizophrenia, and delusions of jealousy. Later (“Neurose und Psychose” 1924 [1923]), Freud
reserves the label ‘narcissistic neurosis’ for melancholia, as opposed to the psychoses. However, the earlier
nomenclature fits Adorno and Horkheimer’s diagnosis better, so I will stick with it.
196 Importantly, Adorno and Horkheimer do not limit the phenomenon of fascism to the historical
political systems that are usually called ‘fascist,’ typically Hitler’s Third Reich, Mussolini’s rule in Italy
and Franco’s rule in Spain. Rather, Adorno and Horkheimer see these systems as specific and poignant
eruptions of political and cultural currents latent in advanced capitalist society, therefore in the Western
world as a whole.
197 The mechanism of paranoid projection is discussed in detail in what is perhaps the most
important of the theses on anti-semitism—thesis VI—in Dialektik der Aufklärung. See Adorno and
Horkheimer, Dialektik der Aufklärung, in Max Horkheimer: Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 5 (Frankfurt am
Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1997), 217-230; English translation by Edmund Jephcott in Dialectic
of Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 154-165. Both strands identified here are
intermingled in the discussion and brought together under the umbrella of “paranoid” or “false” projection,
which itself is said to be the deep cause of the enlightenment’s pathology. In fact, the ideal of
emancipation and “healthy” reflection is identified with “die Gegenbewegung zur falschen Projektion” [the
countermovement to false projection] in the last sentence of the section (Dialektik der Aufklärung, 230/
Dialectic of Enlightenment, 165).
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