second individuation · collective individuation
Individuation stands as one of the most contested and generative concepts in the depth-psychology corpus, carrying markedly different theoretical weight depending on the intellectual tradition in which it is deployed. Within the Jungian lineage, individuation designates the lifelong process by which the psyche achieves a personal synthesis of the collective and the unique — a movement toward the self that is neither completable nor reducible to mere ego-development. Jung's commentators divide over its democratic accessibility versus its aristocratic prerequisites, its temporal location in the second half of life versus its potential emergence at any stage, and the degree to which it demands ego strength as a precondition. Guggenbuhl-Craig, Edinger, and Samuels each refract the concept through clinical and cultural lenses, stressing variously its confrontation with shadow and death, its instinctual character, and its relation to the self as a second psychic center. A philosophically distinct but conceptually resonant treatment appears in Gilbert Simondon, whose ontogenetic framework conceives individuation not as a psychological telos but as a constitutive operation of being itself — physical, vital, psychical, and collective in successive phases. For Simondon, the pre-individual persists within the individuated, making possible a second individuation through collective transindividual participation. These two traditions — depth-psychological and process-ontological — together reveal individuation as a concept that bridges questions of selfhood, community, becoming, and the relationship between part and whole.
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 defines Jungian individuation as an uncompletable dynamic synthesis of collective and individual dimensions, symbolically expressed through journey, death-rebirth, and alchemical transformation.
, 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 argues that the individual being retains pre-individual potentials that, pooled with those of others, enable a second, collective individuation constituting transindividual reality.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis
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 insists that individuation must be grasped as an ontogenetic operation rather than as the mere production of a finished individual, preserving systemic connectivity rather than isolation.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis
He likens individuation to a drive such as sex or hunger, postulating an instinct in man to grow psychologically, similar to ordinary physical maturation. Individuation is, therefore, a natural tendency.
Samuels identifies the tension in Jung's account between individuation as a universal instinctual drive and as an elite vocation requiring prior adaptation to collective norms.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
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 spiritually oriented ego-subordination that demands confrontation with shadow and death at any life stage, not only the second half.
, Power in the Helping Professions, 1971thesis
the living being is also a being that results from an initial individuation and amplifies this individuation... 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 the living being from the technical object by its capacity to continue and amplify its own individuation, modifying itself rather than merely adapting externally.
, 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 establishes that individuation is never an absolute origin but always a phase within a polyphasic being that retains pre-individual potentials capable of further individuations.
, 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. The being taken in its center on the level of individuation must be grasped as splitting into individual and milieu
Simondon argues that the proper locus of analysis is the individuating process itself, not the already-constituted individual who is merely a lateral product of that process.
, 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
Simondon describes psychical individuation as exceeding the limits of the living organism and opening onto a transindividual order in which pre-individual reality connects psychical beings to one another.
, 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 atomist and hylomorphic doctrines for grounding individuation in pre-formed substances, arguing instead for a strictly ontogenetic account where individuation is its own explanatory principle.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
the living being is to itself partially its own principle of individuation; it continues its individuation... the becoming of the living being is always a becoming between two individuations
Simondon distinguishes the living being's self-continuing individuation from the single completed individuation of a technical artifact, characterizing life as an ongoing allagmatic relation.
, 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
Simondon draws a foundational distinction between the intrinsic constitution of an individual and its differentiation from others, warning against conflating these two aspects of individuation.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
relation, to the world and to the collective, is a dimension of individuation in which the individual participates based on pre-individual reality, which progressively individuates.
Simondon links psychology and social theory through individuation, treating relational participation in the collective as itself a dimension of ongoing ontogenesis.
, 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 articulates action and emotion as dual perspectives on collective individuation, the former expressing the group dimension and the latter the individual participant's interiority.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
the group is a syncrystallization of several individual beings, and it is the result of this syn-crystallization that constitutes the group personality; the group personality is not introduced into individuals by the group
Simondon models group formation as a collective individuation analogous to crystallization, in which individuals serve simultaneously as milieu and agents, not as pre-formed units assembled from outside.
, 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.
Simondon describes a reciprocal process in which each subsequent individuation simultaneously advances self-formation and resolves a problematic situation within the milieu.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
the individual 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.
Simondon refutes the hylomorphic reduction of the individual to a relational term, insisting instead that the individual is constituted as the active site and agent of relation.
, 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.
Simondon grounds physical individuation in energetic state-modification and structural correspondence rather than material identity, establishing the thermodynamic logic underlying his broader ontology.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
Above this scale, there is physical individuation when the system is capable of receiving information a single time, then develops and amplifies this initial singularity by individuating
Simondon distinguishes physical from vital individuation by the former's single reception of information and iterative amplification, situating both within a scalar ontology of pre-individual reality.
, 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 argues that genuine biological individuality is constituted by mortality — organisms capable of indefinite division or regeneration lack the defining boundary that makes individuation complete.
, 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 describes the collective as a third phase of being in which individuated beings contribute their persisting pre-individual natures to a new, transindividual individuation.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
The ego is one and the Self is the other. And when the experience of the Self erupts in the individual, suddenly one is aware: 'I'm not alone in my own house, somebody else has been living here all the time'
Edinger frames individuation's central moment as the discovery of the self as a second psychic center alongside the ego, presenting this as the pivotal Jungian contribution to twentieth-century psychology.
, Science of the Soul: A Jungian Perspective, 2002supporting
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 interprets emotion as the affective register through which a being's pre-individual charge summons collective individuation, linking individual and transindividual dimensions.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
Intra-individual integration is reciprocal with transindividual integration. The category of presence is also the category of the transindividual.
Simondon identifies 'presence' as the temporal-dimensional category through which intra-individual coherence and transindividual communication become mutually constitutive.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020aside
we must replace the notion of stable equilibrium with that of metastable equilibrium, and we must replace the notion of good form with that of information; the system in which the being acts is a universe of metastability
Simondon replaces Gestalt's stable equilibrium model with metastability and information as the operative conditions for individuation in living systems.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020aside
becoming is not opposed to being; it is the constitutive relation of being qua individual.
Simondon resolves the classical metaphysical opposition of being and becoming by identifying becoming as the intrinsic constitutive relation through which the physical individual exists.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020aside