Chapter XIX

Types and Syndromes

A. The Approach

Hardly any concept in contemporary American psychology has been so thoroughly criticized as that of typology. Since »any doctrine of types is a halfway approach to the problem of individuality, and nothing more,«¹ any such doctrine is subject to devastating attacks from both extremes: because it never catches the unique, and because its generalizations are not statistically valid and do not even afford productive heuristic tools. From the viewpoint of general dynamic theory of personality, it is objected that typologies tend towards pigeonholing and transform highly flexible traits into static, quasi-biological characteristics while neglecting, above all, the impact of historical and social factors. Statistically, the insufficiency of twofold typologies is particularly emphasized. As to the heuristic value of typologies, their overlapping, and the necessity of constructing »mixed types« which practically disavow the original constructs, is pointed out. At the hub of all these arguments is aversion against the application of rigid concepts to the supposedly fluid reality of psychological life.

The development of modern psychological typologies, as contrasted, for example, with the old scheme of »temperaments,« has its origin in psychiatry, in the therapeutic need for a classification of mental diseases as a means of facilitating diagnosis and prognosis. Kraepelin and Lombroso are the fathers of psychiatric typology. Since the clear-cut division of mental diseases has in the meantime completely broken down, the basis of typological classifications of the »normal,« derived from the former, seems to vanish. It is stigmatized as a remnant of the »taxonomic« phase of behavior theory the formulation of which »tended to remain descriptive, static and sterile.«² If not even the mentally diseased, whose psychological dynamics are largely replaced by rigid patterns, can be sensibly divided according to types, how, then, is there any chance of success for procedures such as the famous one of Kretschmer, the raison d'être of which was the standard classification of manic-depression and dementia praecox?

The present state of the discussion on typology is summed up by Anne Anastasi as follows:

»Type theories have been most commonly criticized because of their attempt to classify individuals into sharply divided categories. ... [S]uch a procedure implies a multi-modal distribution of traits. The introverts, for example, would be expected to cluster at one end of the scale, the extroverts at the other end, and the point of demarcation between them should be clearly apparent. Actual measurement, however, reveals a uni-modal distribution of all traits, which closely resembles the bell-shaped normal curve.

Similarly, it is often difficult to classify a given individual definitely into one type or the other. The typologists, when confronted with this difficulty, have frequently proposed intermediate or ›mixed‹ types to bridge the gap between the extremes. Thus Jung suggested an ambivert type which maifests neither introvert nor extrovert tendencies to a predominant degree. Observation seems to show, however, that the ambivert category is the largest, and the decided introverts and extroverts are relatively rare. The reader is referred, for example, to the distribution curve obtained by Heidbreder with an introversion questionnaire administered to 200 college students (Ch. II). It will be recalled that the majority of scores were intermediate and that as the extremes of either introversion or extroversion were approached, the number of cases became progressively smaller. The curve, too, showed no sharp breaks, but only a continuous gradation from the mean to the two extremes. As was indicated in Chapter II, the same may be said of all other measurable traits of the individual, whether social, emotional, intellectual, or physical.

It is apparent, then, that insofar as type theories imply the classification of individuals into clear-cut classes, they are untenable in the face of a mass of indisputable data. Such an assumption, however, is not necessarily inherent in all systems of human typology. It is more characteristic of the popular versions and adaptations of type theories than of the original concepts. To be sure, type psychologists have often attempted to categorize individuals, but this was not an indispensable part of their theories; their concepts have occasionally been sufficiently modified to admit of a normal distribution of traits.«³

In spite of such concessions to more satisfactory categorizations, the »nominalistic« exclusion of typological classifications has triumphed to such a degree that it is almost tantamount to a taboo, no matter how urgent the scientific and pragmatic need for such classifications may be. It should be noted that this taboo is closely related to the notion, still taught by numerous academic psychiatrists, that mental diseases are essentially inexplicable. If one would assume, for the argument's sake, that psychoanalytic theory has really succeeded in establishing a number of dynamic schemata of psychoses, by which the latter become »meaningful« within the psychological life of the individual in spite of all their irrationality and the disintegration of the psychotic personality, the problem of typology would be completely redefined.

It cannot be doubted that the critique of psychological types expresses a truly humane impulse, directed against that kind of subsumption of individuals under pre-established classes which has been consummated in Nazi Germany, where the labeling of live human beings, independently of their specific qualities, resulted in decisions about their life and death. It is this motive which has been stressed particularly by Allport;⁴ and Boder has demonstrated in great detail in his study of »Nazi Science« the interconnections of psychological pro et contra schemes, the repressive function of categories such as Jaensch's »Gegentypus« and the arbitrary manipulation of empirical findings.⁵ Thus, enquiries devoted to the study of prejudice have to be particularly cautious when the issue of typology comes up. To express it pointedly, the rigidity of constructing types is itself indicative of that »stereopathic« mentality which belongs to the basic constituents of the potentially fascist character. We need only to refer, in this connection, to our high scorer of Irish descent who attributes his personal traits unhesitatingly to his national extraction. Jaensch's »anti-type,« for example, is an almost classic case of the mechanism of projection, the effectiveness of which in the make-up of our high scorers has been established, and which in Jaensch's has wormed its way into the very same science whose task it would be to account for this mechanism. The essentially undynamic, »antisociological,« and quasi-biological nature of classifications of the Jaensch brand is directly opposed to the theory of our work as well as to its empirical results.⁶

Yet all these objections do not dispose altogether of the problem of typology. Not all typologies are devices for dividing the world into sheep and buck, but some of them reflect certain experiences which, though hard to systematize, have, to put it as loosely as possible, hit upon something. Here one has to think primarily of Kretschmer, Jung, and Freud. It should be particularly emphasized that Freud, whose general emphasis on psychological dynamics puts him above the suspicion of any simple »biologism« and stereotypical thinking, published as late as 1931⁷ a rather categorical typology without bothering much about the methodological difficulties of which he must have been aware very well, and even, with apparent naïveté, constructing »mixed« types out of the basic ones. Freud was too much led by concrete insights into the matters themselves, had too intimate a relationship to his scientific objects, to waste his energy on the kind of methodological reflections which may well turn out to be acts of sabotage of organized science against productive thinking. This is not to say that his typology has to be accepted as it stands. Not only can it be criticized by the usual antitypological arguments to which reference was made at the beginning of this chapter; as Otto Fenichel has pointed out, it is also problematic from the viewpoint of orthodox psychoanalytic theory. What counts, however, is that Freud found such a classification worthwhile. One has only to look at the relatively easy and convincing integration of different kinds of twofold typologies in Donald W. MacKinnon's »Structure of Personality«⁸ to gain the impression that typologies are not altogether arbitrary, do not necessarily do violence to the manifoldness of the human, but have some basis in the structure of psychological reality.

The reason for the persistent plausibility of the typological approach, however, is not a static biological one, but just the opposite: dynamic and social. The fact that human society has been up to now divided into classes affects more than the external relations of men. The marks of social repression are left within the individual soul. The French sociologist Durkheim in particular has shown how and to what extent hierarchical social orders permeate the individual's thinking, attitudes, and behavior. People form psychological »classes,« inasmuch as they are stamped by variegated social processes. This in all probability holds good for our own standardized mass culture to an even higher degree than for previous periods. The relative rigidity of our high scorers, and of some of our low scorers, reflects psychologically the increasing rigidity according to which our society falls into two more or less crude opposing camps. Individualism, opposed to inhuman pigeonholing, may ultimately become a mere ideological veil in a society which actually is inhuman and whose intrinsic tendency towards the »subsumption« of everything shows itself by the classification of people themselves. In other words, the critique of typology should not neglect the fact that large numbers of people are no longer, or rather never were, »individuals« in the sense of traditional nineteenth-century philosophy. Ticket thinking is possible only because the actual existence of those who indulge in it is largely determined by »tickets«: standardized, opaque, and overpowering social processes which leave to the »individual« but little freedom for action and true individuation. Thus the problem of typology is put on a different basis. There is reason to look for psychological types because the world in which we live is typed and »produces« different »types« of persons. Only by identifying stereotypical traits in modern humans, and not by denying their existence, can the pernicious tendency towards all-pervasive classification and subsumption be challenged.

The construction of psychological types does not merely imply an arbitrary, compulsive attempt to bring some »order« into the confusing diversity of human personality. It represents a means of »conceptualizing« this diversity, according to its own structure, of achieving closer understanding. The radical renunciation of all generalizations beyond those pertaining to the most obvious findings would not result in true empathy into human individuals but rather in an opaque, dull description of psychological »facts«: every step which goes beyond the factual and aims at psychological meaning – as it has been defined in Freud's basic statement that all our experiences are meaningful (»dass alle unsere Erlebnisse einen Sinn haben«) – inevitably involves generalizations transcending the supposedly unique »case,« and it happens that these generalizations more frequently than not imply the existence of certain regularly recurring nuclei or syndromes which come rather close to the idea of »types.« Ideas such as those of orality, or of the compulsive character, though apparently derived from highly individualized studies, make sense only if they are accompanied by the implicit assumption that the structures thus named, and discovered within the individual dynamics of an individual, pertain to such basic constellations that they may be expected to be representative, no matter how »unique« the observations upon which they are based may be. Since there is a typological element inherent in any kind of psychological theory, it would be spurious to exclude typology per se. Methodological »purity« in this respect would be tantamount to renouncing the conceptual medium or any theoretical penetration of the given material, and would result in an irrationality as complete as the arbitrary subsumptiveness of the »pigeonholing« schools.

Within the context of our study, another reflection of an entirely different nature points in the same direction. It is a pragmatic one: the necessity that science provide weapons against the potential threat of the fascist mentality. It is an open question whether and to what extent the fascist danger really can be fought with psychological weapons. Psychological »treatment« of prejudiced persons is problematic because of their large number as well as because they are by no means »ill,« in the usual sense, and, as we have seen, at least on the surface level are often even better »adjusted« than the nonprejudiced ones. Since, however, modern fascism is inconceivable without a mass basis, the inner complexion of its prospective followers still maintains its crucial significance, and no defense which does not take into account the subjective phase of the problem would be truly »realistic.« It is obvious that psychological countermeasures, in view of the extent of the fascist potential among modern masses, are promising only if they are differentiated in such a way that they are adapted to specific groups. An over-all defense would move on a level of such vague generalities that it would in all probability fall flat. It may be regarded as one of the practical results of our study that such a differentiation has at least to be also one which follows psychological lines, since certain basic variables of the fascist character persist relatively independently of marked social differentiations. There is no psychological defense against prejudice which is not oriented toward certain psychological »types.« We would make a fetish of the methodological critique of typology and jeopardize each attempt of coming psychologically to grips with prejudiced persons if a number of very drastic and extreme differences – such as the one between the psychological make-up of a conventional anti-Semite and a sado-masochistic »tough guy« – were excluded simply because none of these types is ever represented in classic purity by a single individual.

The possibility of constructing largely different sets of psychological types has been widely recognized. As the result of the previous discussions, we base our own attempt on the three following major criteria:

a. We do not want to classify human beings by types which divide them neatly statistically, nor by ideal types in the usual sense which have to be supplemented by »mixtures.« Our types are justified only if we succeed in organizing, under the name of each type, a number of traits and dispositions, in bringing them into a context which shows some unity of meaning in those traits. We regard those types as being scientifically most productive which integrate traits, otherwise dispersed, into meaningful continuities and bring to the fore the interconnection of elements which belong together according to their inherent »logic,« in terms of psychological understanding of underlying dynamics. No mere additive or mechanical subsumption of traits under the same type should be permitted. A major criterion for this postulate would be that, confronted with »genuine« types, even so-called deviations would no longer appear as accidental but would be recognizable as meaningful, in a structural sense. Speaking genetically, the consistency of meaning of each type would suggest that as many traits as possible can be deduced from certain basic forms of underlying psychological conflicts, and their resolutions.

b. Our typology has to be a critical typology in the sense that it comprehends the typification of men itself as a social function. The more rigid a type, the more deeply does he show the hallmarks of social rubber stamps. This is in accordance with the characterization of our high scorers by traits such as rigidity and stereotypical thinking. Here lies the ultimate principle of our whole typology. Its major dichotomy lies in the question of whether a person is standardized himself and thinks in a standardized way, or whether he is truly »individualized« and opposes standardization in the sphere of human experience. The individual types will be specific configurations within this general division. The latter differentiates prima facie between high and low scorers. At closer view, however, it also affects the low scorers themselves: the more they are »typified« themselves, the more they express unwittingly the fascist potential within themselves.⁹

c. The types must be constructed in such a way that they may become productive pragmatically, that is to say, that they can be translated into relatively drastic defense patterns which are organized in such a way that differences of a more individual nature play but a minor role. This makes for a certain conscious »superficiality« of typification, comparable to the situation in a sanatorium where no therapy could ever be initiated if one did not divide the patients into manic-depressives, schizophrenics, paranoiacs, and so forth, though one is fully aware of the fact that these distinctions are likely to vanish the deeper one goes. In this connection, however, the hypothesis may be allowed that if one could only succeed in going deep enough, at the end of the differentiation just the more universal »crude« structure would reappear: some basic libidinous constellations. An analogy from the history of the arts may be permitted. The traditional, crude distinction between Romanesque and Gothic style was based on the characteristic of round and pointed arches. It became apparent that this division was insufficient; that both traits were overlapping and that there were much deeper-lying contrasts of construction between the two styles. This, however, led to such complicated definitions that it proved impossible to state in their terms whether a given building was Romanesque or Gothic in character though its structural totality rarely left any doubt to the observer to which epoch it belonged. Thus it ultimately became necessary to resume the primitive and naive classification. Something similar may be advisable in the case of our problem. An apparently superficial question such as »What kind of people do you find among the prejudiced?« may easily do more justice to typological requirements than the attempt to define types at first sight by, say, different fixations at pregenital or genital developmental phases and the like. This indispensable simplification can probably be achieved by the integration of sociological criteria into the psychological constructs. Such sociological criteria may refer to the group memberships and identifications of our subjects as well as to social aims, attitudes, and patterns of behavior. The task of relating psychological type criteria to sociological ones is facilitated because it has been established in the course of our study that a number of »clinical« categories (such as the adulation of a punitive father) are intimately related to social attitudes (such as belief in authority for authority's sake). Hence, we may well »translate« for the hypothetical purposes of a typology a number of our basic psychological concepts into sociological ones most closely akin to them.

These considerations have to be supplemented by a requirement prescribed by the nature of our study. Our typology, or rather, scheme of syndromes, has to be organized in such a way that it fits as »naturally« as possible our empirical data. It should be borne in mind that our material does not exist in an empty space, as it were, but that it is structurally predetermined by our tools, particularly the questionnaire and the interview schedule. Since our hypotheses were formulated according to psychoanalytic theory, the orientation of our syndromes toward psychoanalytic concepts is reinforced. Of course, the limitations of such an attempt are narrow since we did not »analyze« any of our subjects. Our characterization of syndromes has to concentrate on traits that have proved to be psychoanalytically significant rather than on the ultimate dynamic patterns of depth psychology.

In order to place the following typological draft into its proper perspective, it should be recalled that we have pointed out in the chapter on the F scale that all the clusters of which this scale is made up belong to one single, »over-all« syndrome. It is one of the outstanding findings of the study that »highness« is essentially one syndrome, distinguishable from a variety of »low« syndromes. There exists something like »the« potentially fascist character, which is by itself a »structural unit.« In other words, traits such as conventionality, authoritarian submissiveness and aggressiveness, projectivity, manipulativeness, etc., regularly go together. Hence, the »subsyndromes« which we outline here are not intended to isolate any of these traits. They are all to be understood within the general frame of reference of the high scorer. What differentiates them is the emphasis on one or another of the features or dynamics selected for characterization, not their exclusiveness. However, it seems to us that the differential profiles arising within the overall structure can readily be distinguished. At the same time, their interconnection by the over-all potentially fascist structure is of such a nature that they are »dynamic« in the sense that transitions from one to the other could easily be worked out by analyzing the increase or decrease of some of the specific factors. Such a dynamic interpretation of them could achieve more adequately – that is to say, with a better understanding of the underlying processes – what is usually done in a haphazard way by the »mixed types« of static typologies. However, theory and empirical substantiation of these dynamic relations among the syndromes could not be touched upon within the present research.

The principle according to which the syndromes are organized is their »type-being« in the sense of rigidity, lack of cathexis, stereopathy. This does not necessarily imply, however, that the order of our syndromes represents a more dynamic »scale of measurement.« It pertains to potentialities, and accessibility to countermeasures, but not to overt prejudice – basically to the problem of »over-all highness« vs. »lowness.« It will be seen, for example, that the case illustrating the psychologically relatively harmless syndrome at the bottom of our scheme is extremely high in terms of overt antiminority prejudice.

Pragmatic requirements as well as the idea that the high scorers are generally more »typed« than the low scorers seem to focus our interest on the prejudiced person. Yet we deem it necessary also to construct syndromes of low scorers. The general direction of our research leads us to stress, with a certain onesidedness, psychological determinants. This, however, should never make us forget that prejudice is by no means an entirely psychological, »subjective« phenomenon. It has to be remembered what we pointed out in Chapter XVII^[10]: that »high« ideology and mentality are largely fomented by the objective spirit of our society. Whereas different individuals react differently, according to their psychological make-up, to the ubiquitous cultural stimuli of prejudice, the objective element of prejudice cannot be neglected if we want to understand the attitudes of individuals or psychological groups. It is therefore not sufficient to ask: »Why is this or that individual ethnocentric?« but rather: »Why does he react positively to the omnipresent stimuli, to which this other man reacts negatively?« The potentially fascist character has to be regarded as a product of interaction between the cultural climate of prejudice and the »psychological« responses to this climate. The former consists not only of crude outside factors, such as economic and social conditions, but of opinions, ideas, attitudes, and behavior which appear to be the individual's but which have originated neither in his autonomous thinking nor in his self-sufficient psychological development but are due to his belonging to our culture. These objective patterns are so pervasive in their influence that it is just as much of a problem to explain why an individual resists them as it is to explain why they are accepted. In other words, the low scorers present just as much of a psychological problem as do the high scorers, and only by understanding them can we obtain a picture of the objective momentum of prejudice. Thus the construction of »low« syndromes becomes imperative. Naturally, they have been chosen in such a way as to fit as well as possible with our general principles of organization. Yet it should not come as a surprise that they are more loosely interconnected than the »high« ones.

The syndromes to be discussed have been developed gradually. They go back to a typology of anti-Semites worked out and published by the Institute of Social Research.¹¹ This scheme was modified and extended to the low scorers during the present research. In its new form, which emphasized the more psychological aspects, it was applied particularly to the Los Angeles sample; the interviewers here tried as far as possible to ascertain the relation between their case findings and the hypothetical types. The syndromes which are presented here are the result of the modifications which this draft underwent on the basis of our empirical findings, and of continuous theoretical critique. Still, they have to be regarded as tentative, as an intermediate step between theory and empirical data. For further research, they need redefinition in terms of quantifiable criteria. The justification of presenting them now lies in the fact that they may serve as guides for this future research. Each syndrome is illustrated by a profile of one characteristic case, mainly on the basis of the interview protocol of each person selected.