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

the conflict that prevented satisfaction in the first place. In paranoia, in particular, the
conflict that takes place is between the ego and the external world, partly in its
representation by the super-ego. The ego feels pressure from the demands of the id, but
they are irreconcilable with external reality and with demands imposed by the super-ego.
The psyche responds to the conflict with the ego’s turning away from reality and
subsequently reconstructing a new framework for external reality in accordance with a
system of delusions. 225 This system allows the ego to re-attach itself to external reality,
in a way that is acceptable to the super-ego (since, as we have seen, the delusions
constitute negations of the repressed wish that the super-ego could not withstand), and in
a way that gives outward expression to what was repressed, the infantile wish of the id
(since that which was repressed constantly returns from without, so that it finds
expression within reality without the individual’s feeling responsible for it).
I propose that we can interpret the main ideas of the Dialektik der Aufklärung as a
reconstruction of the process of illness along the lines I have laid out above. To see this,
I will reconstruct Adorno and Horkheimer’s view of the pathological development of
enlightened reason through the stages of (i) an account of the development of civilization
and enlightenment, (ii) an element of fixation that occurs in this development, (iii) a
conflict that is brought to intolerable dimensions, (iv) regression, and finally (v) the
return of the repressed in the formation of symptoms.
225 The mechanism by which this system is established and its relation to the content of repression
has already been discussed above in the section on projection.
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