But this requirement no longer operates by means of its social impetus, as it were, but rather as if it had undergone a metapsychosis into a norm which must be satisfied for its own sake, not for my sake nor for yours.

DEFINE: The term 'metapsychosis' describes how a social demand becomes a self-contained norm detached from its original human purpose.

Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simm…, loc. 6456