Isolating personal discontent from general unhappiness makes cases administratively treatable

Evidence

But as this managerial mode of thought and research spreads into other dimensions of the intellectual effort, the services which it renders become increasingly inseparable from its scientific validity. In this context, functionalization has a truly therapeutic effect. Once the personal discontent is isolated from the general unhappiness, once the universal concepts which militate against functionalization are dissolved into particular referents, the case becomes a treatable and tractable incident. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 440

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the modern therapeutic/preventive framing where systemic problems are converted into individually manageable conditions — converse of ‘depression is society’s problem individually mediated.’