Allowing for Ambiguity in the Social Sciences: Else Frenkel-Brunswik’s methodological practice in The Authoritarian Personality ; English: English

This paper presents an assessment of Else Frenkel-Brunswik’s contributions to the social sciences by reconstructing both her research practice and methodological reflections on this practice, which are most prominent in the qualitative methodology used in her parts of the study The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno et al. 1950). After a brief discussion of the study’s general methodology, we contextualize the qualitative parts done by Frenkel-Brunswik along her earlier lines of research, looking at the impact of her pre-emigration influences of logical empiricism, academic psychology, and psychoanalysis in Vienna as well as her experience of persecution and exile. We argue that her understanding of ambiguity was key to her methodology from an early stage onwards, and was key to her distinctive confrontation with Nazi psychologist Erich R. Jaensch. Building upon findings from the Archive for the History of Sociology in Austria (AGSÖ) in Graz and the Institute for Jewish Research (YIVO) in New York, this article reevaluates Else Frenkel-Brunswik’s epistemological po-sition within the context of the study The Authoritarian Personality, allowing for a full appreciation of her role and contributions to the field of research on authoritarianism.