The rise of the Public Cult of Progressivism (along with the private cults of the New Age Movement) accounts for the expansion of career opportunities for psychoanalysts (approximately, 1955-1965) and mental health workers (1960 on) plus the loss of nerve of seminarians at Princeton Theological Seminary (between 1965 and 1972).

Menninger did not know this.  However, as a psychoanalyst, he was trained to “listen”.  He chastised members of his own discipline for “sins of omission” (219), but that is the hazard of the profession.  Psychotherapy is difficult because the analyst does not know how to “label” what he is “hearing”.  Her interpretations must always be provisional.

Ironically, Menninger’s book came out precisely at the time when an answer to the “morality gap” (that he identified) appeared within the Progressive consolidation itself.

Menninger “heard” – with his “analytical ears” – that the word “sin” was disappearing.  This indicated that “something” was missing (hence, “the morality gap”).  He did not realize that the “something” was already being constructed, in various guises, without label.  Twenty years later, the replacement to the word “sin” was popularly referred to as “political incorrectness”.

The question in 1973: Whatever became of “sin”?

The answer by 1993: It was replaced by “political incorrectness”.