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individuation

 
Dictionary: in·di·vid·u·a·tion   (ĭn'də-vĭj'ū-ā'shən) pronunciation
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n.
  1. The act or process of individuating, especially the process by which social individuals become differentiated one from the other.
  2. The condition of being individuated; individuality.
  3. Philosophy.
    1. The development of the individual from the general or universal.
    2. The distinction or determination of the individual within the general or universal.
  4. In Jungian psychology, the gradual integration and unification of the self through the resolution of successive layers of psychological conflict.
  5. Embryology. Formation of distinct organs or structures through the interaction of adjacent tissues.

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: individuation
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Determination that an individual identified in one way is numerically identical with or distinct from an individual identified in another way (e.g., Venus, known as "the morning star" in the morning and "the evening star" in the evening). Since the concept of an individual seems to require that it be recognizable as such in several possible situations, the problem of individuation is of great importance in ontology and logic. The problem of identifying an individual existing at two different times (transtemporal identity) is one of many forms that the problem of individuation can take: What makes that caterpillar identical with this butterfly? What makes the person you are now identical with the person you were a decade ago? In modal logic, the problem of transworld individuation (or transworld identity) is of importance because the standard model of theoretic semantics for systems of modal logic assumes that it makes sense to speak of the same individual existing in more than one possible world.

For more information on individuation, visit Britannica.com.

Psychoanalysis: Individuation
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 (Analytical Psychology)

Carl Gustav Jung considered individuation to be a step or process that leads to a partial disengagement from the control of the unconscious and from collective rules and norms and feelings. This process is accompanied by a development of the rapport of the ego to the self, through an ever closer recognition of the forces and figures that structure—at first without our being aware of it—our representations and behavior.

The earliest version of this notion can be found in Gérard Dorn, in the sixteenth century, then in the Goethean conception of the novel of apprenticeship (Bildungsroman), as well as in the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. However, in his writings of the second decade of the twentieth century, Jung gave it a whole different meaning and significance, inscribing it into his own experience, then integrating it with the successive stages of his thought on the relationship with the unconscious.

Jung mentions individuation for the first time in 1916 in his Seven Sermons to the Dead and in an essay entitled "Adaptation, Individuation and Collectivity." In the first of these, the emphasis was on the imperious need for everyone to undo the obscure envelope of their origin, distinguishing and differentiating themselves from it, to learn how to live as a unique being, separate and alone ("einzelsein," he wrote). In the second work he stressed the debt contracted and the price to pay by anyone who distances themselves from the common knowledge and collective norms of a group.

These works showed the impact of Jung's own experience on his work after the break with Freud (during the period of 1912-1918). His experience led to the emergence of images that, under the influence of the emotions he was feeling, gradually took on voice and shape: individuation for him was not only a necessity and a principle, on the basis of which a human being is constituted in his singularity, it is also a work—Jung soon was to call it a process (ein Prozess), and even a work of long duration (the ancient alchemists, whom he studied from 1935-1936, referred to it as their opus)—which one can learn to accompany, support, and even provoke.

From one phase of his work to another, Jung was always very specific about the stakes and the risks (of exaltation, or inversely, of depression, or even psychotic breakdown) of individuation, as well as its modalities, notably in the clinical conditions of analytic practice, and its effects, possible or anticipated, on the future of man and on that of the unconscious itself.

In 1918, he started working on some empirical exercises in graphics that made him experience a decentralization, which he later realized was close to that produced by the use of mandalas, as well as the destabilization of the ego produced by Taoism. His reflections on the conditions of symbolic life for us today came from these studies, and also from his later analyses of the history of Christianity and his encounters with Amerindian and African religions. This includes his conception, a rather fluid one, of the self in its relations with the ego: what is at stake presently in individuation can be all the more clearly grasped as one becomes aware of its projections in ancient systems of representation and practice.

Also, from his publication of The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious, in 1928, and with the help of his analyses of alchemical literature and iconography, Jung explored the diverse stages that mark the individuation process : recognition of "the shadow" or "shadows" proper to each, the more or less upsetting or mediating effects of "the anima" or "the animus," and especially the experience of the "Self."

Finally it should be noted that the Jungian reflection on individuation was part of a frequenting of the unconscious that constantly assumed its compensatory capabilities and its capacity to maintain conjoined contradictory attitudes and even givens. From this perspective the quaternary model of psychic functioning that he introduced in his Psychological Types (1921) was deepened and enlarged in the forties and fifties to apply to the analysis of opposing movements (in the direction of incest and inversely towards differentiation) that are stirred by the transference, expanding also to include a reflection on the conditions for an integration of the feminine, and on the question of evil.

Consequently, the Jungian problematic of individuation has provided access to and perspective on certain collective issues, but its pertinence for cultures with a different history this is unknown.

Bibliography

Gaillard, Christian. (1995). Jung. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Humbert,Élie George. (1983). Jung. Paris:Éditions Universitaires.

Jacoby, Mario. (1990). Individuation and narcissism: The psychology of the self in Jung and Kohut (Myron Gubitz, and, in collaboration with the author, Françoise O'Kane, Trans). London: Routledge. (Original work published 1985)

Kast, Verena. (1992). The dynamics of symbols: Fundamentals of Jungian psychotherapy (Susan A. Schwarz, Trans.). New York: Fromm International. (Original work published 1990)

—CHRISTIAN GAILLARD

Veterinary Dictionary: individuation
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1. the process of developing individual characteristics.
2. differential regional activity in the embryo occurring in response to organizer influence.

Wikipedia: Individuation
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Individuation (Latin: principium individuationis) is a concept which appears in numerous fields and may be encountered in work by Carl Jung, Gilbert Simondon, Bernard Stiegler, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, David Bohm, and Manuel De Landa. In very general terms, it is the name given to processes whereby the undifferentiated tends to become individual, or to those processes through which differentiated components tend toward becoming a more indivisible whole. Friedrich Nietzsche, for example, offers an extensive discussion of the tension between impartial, chaotic fluidity and individuated subjectivity in The Birth of Tragedy (1872), whereby Dionysian dismemberment and Apollonian individuation respectively embody these dichotomous qualities. Nietzsche claims that the perpetual, irresolvable tension between these two opposing aspects of nature fosters the conditions necessary for their uneasy synthesis in the creation of tragic art.

In economics, individuation parallels specialization and increases the efficiency of the division of labor. It serves as a means for individuals to find comparative advantage in the marketplace.

Contents

Carl Jung on individuation

According to Jungian psychology, individuation is the process of transforming one’s psyche by bringing the personal and collective unconscious into conscious.[1] Individuation has a holistic healing effect on the person, both mentally and physically.[1]

Individuation is a process of psychological differentiation, having for its goal the development of the individual personality. "In general, it is the process by which individual beings are formed and differentiated; in particular, it is the development of the psychological individual as a being distinct from the general, collective psychology." [2]

Besides achieving physical and mental health[1], people who have advanced towards individuation, they tend to become harmonious, mature, responsible, they promote freedom and justice and have a good understanding about the workings of human nature and the universe.[3]

Gilbert Simondon on individuation

In L'individuation psychique et collective, Gilbert Simondon developed a theory of individual and collective individuation, in which the individual subject is considered as an effect of individuation, rather than a cause. Thus the individual atom is replaced by the neverending ontological process of individuation. Simondon also conceived of "pre-individual fields" as the funds making individuation itself possible. Individuation is an always incomplete process, always leaving a "pre-individual" left-over, itself making possible future individuations. Furthermore, individuation always creates both an individual and a collective subject, which individuate themselves together.

Bernard Stiegler on individuation

The philosophy of Bernard Stiegler draws upon and modifies the work of Gilbert Simondon on individuation, as well as similar ideas in Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud. During a talk given at the Tate Modern in 2004, Stiegler summarized his understanding of individuation. The essential points are the following:

  • The I, as a psychic individual, can only be thought in relationship to a we, which is a collective individual: the I is constituted in adopting a collective tradition, which it inherits, and in which a plurality of Is acknowledge each other’s existence.
  • This inheritance is an adoption in that I can very well, as the French grandson of a German immigrant, recognize myself in a past that was not the past of my ancestors, but that I can make my own; this process of adoption is thus structurally factical.
  • An I is essentially a process, and not a state, and this process is an in-dividuation (it is a process of psychic individuation) as the tendency to become-one, that is, to become indivisible.
  • This tendency never accomplishes itself because it runs into a counter-tendency with which it forms a metastable equilibrium (it must be pointed out how close this conception of the dynamic of individuation is to the Freudian theory of drives, but also to the thinking of Empedocles and of Nietzsche).
  • A we is also such a process (the process of collective individuation); the individuation of the I is always inscribed in that of the we, whereas conversely, the individuation of the we takes place only through those individuations, polemical in nature, of the Is making it up.
  • That which links the individuations of the I and the we is a pre-individual milieu possessing positive conditions of effectiveness, belonging to what Stiegler calls retentional apparatuses. These retentional apparatuses arise from a technical milieu which is the condition of the encounter of the I and the we: the individuation of the I and the we is in this respect also the individuation of the technical system.
  • The technical system is an apparatus which has a specific role (wherein all objects are inserted: a technical object exists only insofar as it is disposed within such an apparatus with other technical objects: this is what Gilbert Simondon calls the technical group): the rifle, for example, and more generally the technical becoming with which it forms a system, are thus the possibility of the emergence of a disciplinary society, according to Michel Foucault.
  • The technical system is also that which founds the possibility of the constitution of retentional apparatuses, springing from the processes of grammatization growing out of the process of individuation of the technical system, and these retentional apparatuses are the basis for the dispositions between the individuation of the I and the individuation of the we in a single process of psychic, collective and technical individuation (where grammatization is a subset of technics) composed of three branches, each branching out into processual groups.
  • This process of triple individuation is itself inscribed in a vital individuation which must be apprehended by a general organology as the vital individuation of natural organs, the technological individuation of artificial organs, and the psycho-social individuation of organizations linking them together.
  • In the process of individuation constitutive of general organology wherein knowledge as such emerges, there are individuations of mnemo-technological sub-systems which over-determine, qua specific organizations of what Stiegler calls tertiary retentions, the organization, the transmission and the elaboration of knowledge stemming from the experience of the sensible.

Stiegler is also concerned with the destructive consequences for psychic and collective individuation which may result from consumerism and consumer capitalism (see, for example, Stiegler, The Disaffected Individual).

Media industry use of the term

The term "individuation" has begun to be used within the media industries to denote new printing and online technologies that permit the mass customization of the contents of a newspaper, a magazine, a broadcast program, or a website so that the contents match each individual user's own unique mix of interests, unlike the mass media practice of producing the same contents for each and every reader, viewer, listener, or online user.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Jung, C. G. (1962). Symbols of Transformation: An analysis of the prelude to a case of schizophrenia (Vol. 2, R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). New York: Harper & Brothers.
  2. ^ C.G. Jung. Psychological Types. Collected Works Vol.6., par. 757
  3. ^ Jung's Individuation process Retrieved on 2009-2-20


Bibliography

Search Wiktionary Look up individuation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

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Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Psychoanalysis. International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. Copyright © 2005 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Veterinary Dictionary. Saunders Comprehensive Veterinary Dictionary 3rd Edition. Copyright © 2007 by D.C. Blood, V.P. Studdert and C.C. Gay, Elsevier. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Individuation".  Read more