Skeptics complained that the F-scale conflated fascism with conservatism. Others noted that the study’s psychoanalytic speculations on the subconscious childhood roots of authoritarianism were impossible to verify (the authors wrote that they “leaned most heavily upon Freud” and made much of the finding that many high-scoring subjects grew up with overbearing fathers). Yet their preoccupation with childhood and “primitive and irrational wishes and fears” have influenced the study of authoritarianism ever since.

How do Trump supporters feel about being dragged onto the therapist’s couch? Allen Strouse is not the archetypal Trump voter whom journalists discover in Rust Belt diners. He is a queer Catholic poet and scholar of medieval literature who teaches at the New School in New York City. He voted for Mr. Trump “as a protest against the Democrats’ failures on economic issues,” but the psychological dimensions of his vote intrigue him. “Having studied Freudian analysis, and being in therapy for 10 years, I couldn’t not reflexively ask myself, ‘How does this decision have to do with my psychology?’” he told me.