Functioning validates form names the assumption ontological fidelity exists to refuse. Modern institutions are built to detect inefficiency, failure, fraud, loss, and poor performance — and are far worse at detecting continued success in a form that has become wrong.
If a company is losing money, everyone grasps the need to change. If it is highly profitable while damaging the ecology around it, adaptation becomes much harder. If a life is visibly collapsing, intervention is understood. If someone is successful, respected, and inwardly certain “this is no longer my life,” the field asks “what are you complaining about?”
That reflex — treating functioning as proof of rightness — is why a drifted-but-successful form is the hardest kind to correct: its success actively defends it against the question, converting prestige, dependence, and inertia into insulation. The model cannot make this assumption, which is why it treats all forms as holding only provisional legitimacy, scrutinizes success rather than only failure, and protects the right to the question mark for the participant who senses the mismatch first. See Ontological Fidelity.