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A philosopher, writer, and composer, Adorno was a fellow traveler of psychoanalysis from the ’30s, and many of his books and essays evidence an acute understanding of the capacity of psychoanalytic discourse to theorize the real. For example, he draws a striking parallel between Freud and Kafka, comparing Freud’s understanding of the mythic murder of the father with Kafka’s literary nightmares.Before the war, Adorno frequented the psychoanalysts of the Frankfurt Institute, and later those who, like himself, had chosen to exile themselves to California. Concerned that some of Freud’s followers had begun to smooth out Freud’s teachings, he defended Freud’s thinking against the revisionism of, for example, Karen Horney and Erich Fromm. Earlier than Lacan but lacking his more profound arguments, Adorno recognizes that Kant’s moral philosophy leads us back to the excesses of Sade. Yet Adorno’s loyalty to Freud did not prevent him from criticising certain points in the theory and praxis of psychoanalysis when he judged them conservative and even reactionary.