Therapeutic and psychological institutions assume the norm-creating role vacated by religion and convention.

Evidence

His critique of what might be called stereotyping through education, or the expropriation of consciousness through consciousness-raising, was even more perspicacious: 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 . — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 612

Categorization

• DEFINE: ‘Social engineering’ and ‘mental welfare technology’ name the apparatus — psychotherapy, sex education, marriage guidance, child guidance — that Schelsky says now shapes instinct.
• XREF: Recapitulates the earlier learned claim that popularized psychology has replaced religious and institutional ritual in shaping human instinct.
• SHARE: The phrase ‘expropriation of consciousness through consciousness-raising’ is a perfect barb for anyone who cares about the therapeutic turn.