Revisiting Theodor Adorno's Critical Theory and Social Psychology

This paper examines Frankfurt School Marxist critic, Theodor Adorno’s Critical Theory through the lens of his intervention in psychoanalysis, situating his philosophy within a much broader critique of capitalism. Drawing on key works such as Minima Moralia, Dialectic of Enlightenment, and his reflections on the pathology of the Culture Industry, the paper offers crucial insights into the self-dissolution and conformity of the twentieth-century bourgeois society. It does so while engaging with Adorno’s social psychology as a means to diagnose and expose the internalisation of the hegemonic norms. His philosophy, often dismissed as pessimistic, can offer one a positive vision of humanity, one that prioritises the autonomy of art forms and fosters critical reflection. This study emphasises the liberatory potential embedded within Adorno’s complex reflections on the irrationality of the administered world.