Recently, more and more psychological knowledge have been infiltrated into many people as some life skill. What effects does this tendency have on these people?. Many famous sociologists and social theorists, such as M. Foucault, A. Giddens and R. Bellar, have tried to explore this phenomenon. In this paper, I also discuss the same issue, and aim to demonstrate that penetration of psychologism has an effect of social control which reproduces the flexible organization of society as "rationalization".
Firstly, I describe the trend of "flexibility in labor market", which is the representative form of flexible organization of society, and show that "flexibility in labor market" idealizes the persons who can raise their "emotional intelligence (EQ) ", because they are considered to be the orderly people that can commit themselves to each situation flexibly without direct supervision. This idealization channels many people into learning to raise their "emotional intelligence" by , for example, reading various psychological self-help books.
Why can "flexibility in labor market" govern the present society so powerfully? That is the second question. My answer is that because it is sustained by consensus of the values of "respect of individuality" and "self-realization" among many people, it can exert its strong "hegemony". The popularization of these psychological values have been promoted by psychologists such as A. Maslow. So, the power of "flexibility in labor market" depends upon the permeation of these psychological values into various organs of society, which , in turn, makes many people need psychological knowledge to survive in the society organized flexibly.
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