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

mechanism, namely paranoid projection. However, by looking at Freud’s explanation of
the mechanism of projection in paranoia, the connection between the two trains of
thought becomes clear, and much about the diagnosis of Dialektik der Aufklärung is
made pellucid.
According to Freud, the mechanism of projection is a means for the repression of
an infantile wish 198 through a two-step process: the first step negates the wish, and the
second projects the negated wish outward. The result of this outward projection is that
what has been repressed internally is thereupon experienced as externally encroaching on
the subject.
In his most detailed analysis of paranoia, the analysis of Dr. Schreber’s written
memoir, Freud discusses four ways in which a wish may be negated in paranoia, two of
which involve projection. 199 The wish, which for Freud is always a homosexual wish in
the case leading to paranoia, 200 may be expressed as ‘I (a woman) love her (a woman).’ 201
The first way to deny this wish is
198 Neuroses and psychoses always arise from the frustration of a childhood wish, either by
external reality full stop or by the super-ego, which takes over representing the demands of reality (Freud,
“Neurose und Psychose,” in Sigmund Freud: Studienausgabe, Vol. 3: Psychologie des Unbewußten
(Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1982), 335. English translation in “Neurosis and
psychosis”, in ed. Strachey, James, The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund
Freud, Vol. 19 (London: Hogarth Press, 1974), 4067).
199 See Freud’s analysis of the Schreber case in “Über einen autobiographisch beschriebenen Fall
von Paranoia,” in Sigmund Freud: Gesammelte Werke, Vol. VIII (London: Imago Publishing Co., 1955),
299-302. English translation in ed. Strachey, James, “Psycho-analytic notes on an autobiographical
account of a case of paranoia,” in The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund
Freud, Vol. 12 (London: Hogarth Press, 1974), 2432-3.
200 Horkheimer and Adorno also identify the infantile wish at issue in the pathology of
enlightenment rationality with a homosexual repression (Dialektik der Aufklärung, 223/ Dialectic of
Enlightenment, 159), but I will not linger on this aspect of the diagnosis here, as it is of little interest and
leads to no significant new discoveries or deeper understanding of the pathology of reason.
201 Freud of course discusses the wish in male terms only (‘I [a man] love him [a man]’). I will
use the female case in my discussion, but, of course, the theoretical point remains the same.
215