Psychology has replaced religion and ritual as society’s norm-creating force.
Evidence
Psychotherapy and psychological care, deliberate sex education and organized marriage guidance, birth control and child guidance clinics, group teaching and human relations, the entire apparatus of modern mental welfare technology or of `social engineering’, are taking the place of the dwindling services of institutions and conventions in shaping the world of human instinct … This process may be described as the conventionalization of the mind through the popularization of psychology. To a far greater extent, and to a far greater depth, than a deliberate and organized attempt to achieve psychological influence could effect, the psychological interpretation and self-interpretation of modern man has taken over precisely the role of that force in the life of society which ritualizes and provides symbols, which distances and classifies, and which creates norms and standards. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2466
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely paradigm-shifting claim that the popularization of psychology functions as a secular replacement for ritual — worth sitting with.
- XREF: Echoes Foucault’s later argument that modern power works through expertise and self-discipline rather than overt coercion. — connects to: Popularized psychology has replaced religious and institutional ritual in shaping human instinct; Secular institutions replace religion as the main motivator of prosocial behavior.; Means of social participation now equal means of behavioral modification for most people. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1082 (+2 more)
- ADDENDUM: Relevant to the sacrifice article — both concern how institutions that ritualize and classify withdraw from old forms and are replaced by modern functional equivalents.
Broader Connections
- Secular institutions replace religion as the main motivator of prosocial behavior.
#corroborates(0.85) - Empiricism replaced religion as the ideology that blocks totalizing social thought.
#contradicts(0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 721 - Means of social participation now equal means of behavioral modification for most people.
#expands(0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1082