second individuation · collective individuation
Citation packet
Individuation is the process by which a person becomes more distinctly themselves through relation to unconscious contents, symbols, shadow, and the Self.
Seba should keep individuation tied to symbolic and unconscious relation, not generic optimization.
The packet links individuation to shadow, Self, symbol, and ego-Self relation.
It should invite Sebastian continuation after the page defines the process.
Individuation stands as one of the most generative and contested concepts across the depth-psychology corpus, drawing together radically different intellectual traditions under a single, deceptively simple heading. In the Jungian lineage — represented here by Jung himself, Samuels, Edinger, and Guggenbuhl-Craig — individuation names the lifelong psychological process by which the ego progressively realizes the self, achieving a personal synthesis of the universal and the unique. It is emphatically a process rather than a state, never completed, expressed through symbolic imagery of journeys, death-and-rebirth, and alchemical transformation. Debate persists within this tradition over whether individuation is aristocratic or democratic, reserved for the second half of life or available at any stage, requiring robust ego-adaptation as a prerequisite or accessible more broadly. A wholly different register is introduced by Simondon, whose philosophical-ontological treatment reconceives individuation not as a psychological achievement but as the very operation by which any being — physical, vital, psychical, or collective — comes into existence. For Simondon, individuation precedes and engenders the individual; the individual is lateral to the process, not its telos. His concept of collective individuation (second individuation) situates the subject as participant in a transindividual reality, linking psychical and social becoming through pre-individual potentials. The tension between these two bodies of work — one broadly therapeutic and humanistic, the other ontogenetic and process-philosophical — gives the concept its unusual depth and reach within the wider library.
The essence of individuation is the achievement of a personal blend between the collective and universal on the one hand, and, on the other, the unique and individual. It is a process, not a state
Samuels provides the canonical Jungian definition of individuation as an ongoing, never-completed process oriented toward synthesis of the personal and the collective, expressed through archetypal imagery and paralleled in alchemy.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
a first individuation gives birth to beings that still carry virtualities and potentials with them; although they are too weak in each being, these potentials joined together can carry out a second individuation (the collective)
Simondon articulates the pivotal distinction between first individuation (the emergence of a singular being) and collective individuation (second individuation), in which pre-individual residues shared across beings generate transindividual participation.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis
individuation is the effort to contact the divine spark in man, to subject the ego to the Self. Since individuation is not reconcilable with psychic narrowness, even the most unpleasant basic facts of human existence must be taken into account.
Guggenbuhl-Craig frames individuation as a comprehensive spiritual and psychological demand — requiring confrontation with the shadow and with death — and argues against restricting it dogmatically to the second half of life.
, Power in the Helping Professions, 1971thesis
Individuation is, therefore, a natural tendency. At the same time, he says that, before individuation can be taken as a goal, a necessary minimum of ‘adaptation to collective norms must be first attained’
Samuels interrogates whether individuation is a universal drive or an élite achievement, exposing the internal tension in Jung’s position between individuation as instinct and individuation as vocation requiring strong ego-adaptation.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
individuation is an event and an operation within a reality that is richer than the individual that results from it. Furthermore, the separation initiated by the individuation within the system cannot lead to the individual’s isolation
Simondon establishes his foundational ontogenetic thesis: individuation precedes and exceeds the individual, constituting a systemic event that restructures without isolating, demanding that the individual be known by returning to the process of its genesis.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis
In the living being there is an individuation by the individual and not merely an operation resulting from an individuation completed in a single stroke… the living individual is a system of individuation, an individuating system, and a system that is in the midst of undergoing the process of individuating
Simondon distinguishes living individuation from technical fabrication: the living being continuously individuates itself by inventing new internal structures, making it both the agent and the medium of an ongoing ontogenetic process.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis
individuation is the arrival of a moment of the being that is not first. Not only is it not first, but it brings with it a certain persistence of the pre-individual phase
Simondon insists that individuation is never an absolute origin: the pre-individual phase persists within the individuated being as a reservoir of potentials capable of initiating further, amplifying operations.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis
The center of individuation is not the constituted individual; the individual is lateral relative to individuation… individuation takes place in a quantum manner through abrupt leaps, each plateau of individuation being capable of once again relating itself to the following as a pre-individual state
Simondon decenters the individual from individuation itself, proposing a quantum, step-wise model in which each achieved plateau of individuation simultaneously constitutes a new pre-individual ground for subsequent operations.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
psychical individuation is a dilation, a precocious expansion of vital individuation… the psychical leads to an order of trans individual reality; indeed, the pre-individual reality associated with individuated living organisms is not segmented like them
Simondon traces psychical individuation as a surpassing of vital individuation, arguing that the psyche’s engagement with pre-individual reality opens necessarily onto transindividual — rather than merely individual — existence.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
To seek the principle of individuation in a reality that precedes individuation itself is to consider individuation strictly as onto-genesis. The principle of individuation is then the source of haecceity.
Simondon critiques classical hylomorphic and atomistic accounts by insisting that the principle of individuation cannot be located in a pre-formed substance but must be sought in the dynamic process of ontogenesis itself.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
instead of merely being a result that progressively degrades, the result of an initial operation of individuation becomes the principle of a further individuation… the becoming of the living being is always a becoming between two individuations
Simondon identifies the distinctive character of living individuation as a recursive, self-amplifying process in which the product of one individuation serves as the active principle of the next, perpetuating an allagmatic relation.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
The individuation that is life is conceived as the discovery in a conflictual situation of a new axiomatic that incorporates and unifies all the elements of this situation into a system that contains the individual.
Simondon links psychical individuation to problem-resolution: life individuates by discovering axiomatics that restructure conflictual, metastable situations, thereby connecting psychological operation to ontogenetic process.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
action is collective individuation grasped from the side of the collective in its relational aspect, while emotion is the same individuation of the collective grasped in the individual being insofar as it participates in this individuation.
Simondon proposes a structural parallelism between action and emotion as two aspects of collective individuation, grounding affectivity within his ontogenetic framework rather than treating it as a merely subjective state.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
the group is not what contributes to the individual being a fully formed personality… the individual beings are both the milieu and the agents of a syncrystallization; the group is a syncrystallization of several individual beings
Simondon elaborates collective individuation through the figure of syncrystallization: group formation is not the aggregation of pre-formed personalities but an ontogenetic event co-produced by the individuals who are simultaneously its milieu and its agents.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
what is individuation? Yet here an important divergence appears between two groups of notions. It can be asked why an individual is what it is. It can also be asked why an individual is different from all other individuals and cannot be confused with them.
Simondon distinguishes two distinct questions concealed within the concept of individuation — the question of internal constitution and the question of differential singularity — arguing that conflating them generates philosophical errors.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
the individual, on the contrary, is a theater and agent of a relation; the individual can only be a term in an ancillary way because it is essentially a theater or agent of an interactive communication.
Against the hylomorphic tradition, Simondon redefines the individual not as a relational term but as the active site and agent of relation, making individuation the ontological ground of communication rather than its precondition.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
this individuation after the initial individuation is individualizing for the individual to the extent that it is resolving for the milieu… a specific psychical operation would be a discovery of significations in an ensemble of signals
Simondon argues that ongoing individuation is simultaneously individualizing for the being and resolving for its milieu, and that psychical individuation specifically takes the form of discovering significations within a field of signals.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
Individuation as an operation is not linked to the identity of a matter but to a state modification… A stable individuality is thus formed when two conditions are met: a certain structure must correspond to a certain energetic state of the system.
Using the model of crystallization, Simondon demonstrates that individuation is defined by state-modification and the correspondence of structure to energetic conditions, establishing the physical paradigm that underlies his broader ontogenetic theory.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
there is physical individuation when the system is capable of receiving information a single time, then develops and amplifies this initial singularity by individuating in a non-
Simondon differentiates physical from vital individuation by the criterion of information reception: physical individuation amplifies a single initiating singularity, whereas living individuation continues to receive and integrate information over its entire existence.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
Individuality can only appear with the death of beings; death is the correlate of individuality.
Simondon advances a striking thanatological thesis: genuine individuation requires mortality, because only beings that die rather than divide indefinitely possess the discrete, non-reproducible existence that defines true individuality.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
the collective is an individuation of the natures linked to individuated beings. Through this ἄπειρον that it carries, the being is not just an individuated being; it is the pair of the individuated being and of nature
Simondon characterizes the collective as a third phase of individuation that resolves the tension between the individuated being and its persistent pre-individual nature, conceiving the subject as a layered system of three successive ontological phases.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
Emotion is a calling into question of the being in its individual aspect insofar it is the capacity to evoke an individuation of the collective that will overlap and link the individuated being.
Simondon reconceives emotion as the subjective correlate of collective individuation: emotion calls the individual into question precisely because it carries pre-individual charge that only the emergence of a transindividual structure can resolve.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
Sexuality is a mixture of nature and of individuation; it is an individuation in suspense, arrested in the asymmetrical determination of the elementary collective
Simondon situates sexuality at the threshold between vital individuation and collective individuation, treating it not as a driving principle in the Freudian sense but as a metaxy — a suspended, incipient movement toward the transindividual.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020aside
differentiation is a structuration and a functional specialization; it is the resolution of a problem, whereas the undifferentiated growth of frequently transplanted tissues takes place before any individuation on the level of the portion
Through the example of transplanted tissue, Simondon illustrates that differentiation is the biological expression of individuation-as-problem-resolution, and that the absence of individuation at the tissue level corresponds to a kind of indefinite, undifferentiated persistence.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020aside