SOURCE: Marcus, Paul. “Bettelheim's Analysis of the Mass Society.” In Autonomy in the Extreme Situation: Bruno Bettelheim, the Nazi Concentration Camps and the Mass Society, pp. 39-60. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999.

In the following essay, Marcus delineates Bettelheim's theory of mass society and compares it to those of contemporary social theorists.

In this [essay] I will elaborate on Bettelheim's analysis of how the mass society undermines the individual's autonomy and integration, including what I think is his novel conceptualization of there being a dangerous continuity between the mass society, the total mass state of Nazi Germany and the concentration camps. I will further suggest that the insights that Bettelheim offered in his analysis of the mass society have relevance to understanding some of the compelling problems that our society faces today. As we shall see, many of the themes that Bettelheim was concerned with are those that a number...