Operational therapy is validated only by the society that can afford its costs

Evidence

What is wrong with it? Nothing. The translation of the concepts and of the proposition as a whole is validated by the society to which the researcher addresses himself. The therapy works because the plant or the government can afford to bear at least a considerable part of the costs, because they are willing to do so, and because the patient is willing to submit to a treatment which promises to be a success. The vague, indefinite, universal concepts which appeared in the untranslated complaint were indeed remnants of the past; their persistence in speech and thought were indeed a block (though a minor one) to understanding and collaboration. Insofar as operational sociology and psychology have contributed to alleviating subhuman conditions, they are parts of progress, intellectual and material. But they also testify to the ambivalent rationality of progress, which is satisfying in its repressive power, and repressive in its satisfactions. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 446

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘repressive in its satisfactions’ formulation bridges to the modern wellness-industrial-complex critique where self-care is co-opted as management.
• DEEPTHINKING: The concluding paradox — progress is satisfying in its repressive power and repressive in its satisfactions — is a dense formulation worth sitting with; it captures the entire therapeutic-turn critique.