Chapters 9 and 10 of Menninger’s book should be read with the last few blogs in mind.  Menninger could “hear” that “something was wrong”, yet he could not correctly identify “what that ‘something’ was”.  He could not because he could not see into the future.

40 years later, the reader cannot help seeing that Menninger was swimming in the waters of Progressivism and looking towards the ark of Christendom.  Now, we are deeper in the waters.  We are further from the boat.

The “morality gap” that Menninger announced on pages 192 and 226 only makes sense in regards to a changing of public symbolic orders from Christianity to Progressivism.  Menninger struggled to put it into perspective, but he could not.  He presented his interpretation, but – like all interpretations in psychoanalysis – his interpretation must be regarded as provisional.

In trying to understand how Menninger’s interpretation “missed the mark”, we have constructed a new – semiotic – tool.

The crossing of two nested forms, one horizontal and one vertical, is the hard-won gift bestowed by Whatever Happened to Sin?

The intersecting nested forms visualize what Menninger was trying to convey: On the vertical axis, there is a choice.