A fuzzy process of individuation

Journal of Adolescence, 1988

The individuation process proceeds through progressive changes of psychological separatian from on.s parents. Two main components are involved in this process: (~) an increasing art erent,atton of an individual's behavior, feelings, judgment and thoughts from those of his/her parents, that is, the self becomes an entity distinct from the parents; and (2)changes in the W* e '

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1974

The paper explores a behavioral paradox which occurs in everyday life: people try to make themselves different and stand out from others, but they also try to minimize their differences and be just like everyone else. The major hypothesis of the study states that people will work to individuate themselves when a positive event is forthcoming in the envronment, but will work to deindividuate themselves in the face of an impending negative event. A second hypothesis, in which individuation is both the independent and the dependent variable, states that people who are already in a deindividuated state should have to work harder to make themselves stand out than people who already feel individuated, but should have tc work less hard to make themselves anonymous. In contrast, people who are in an individual state should show the reverse pattern. The study also explores the hypothesis that males and females would use different techniques to call attention to themselves, as a result of previously learned sex roles. Subjects for the experiments were 80 university undergraduates; results are analyzed statistically while the ensuing discussion examines the outcomes of the study as they underscore the complexity of the individuation process. References are included.

International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 2004

This paper addresses the problematics of individuation in Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy. The concept of fold -the inside of the outside -is analyzed in terms of the relations between thought and unthought constituting the process of thinking in affects. It is suggested that thinking of this sort, called by Deleuze the supreme act of philosophy, may be considered tending towards Jungian and post-Jungian depth psychology. The unconscious of thought is described by the archetypal dynamics of forces acting in the space of the Outside, that this paper posits as the field of collective unconscious. Analogous to Deleuzian virtual tendencies, Jungian archetypes subsist in potentia only and, as a multiplicity of relations between forces, can be expressed through cartographic microanalysis. In accord with Deleuze's method of transcendental empiricism, the unconscious, immanent, microperceptions are reterritorialized by means of mapping the archetypal field.

SOCIETY. INTEGRATION. EDUCATION. Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference

The article aims to reveal the concept of Individuation. Individuation is perceived as a conscious decision to constantly create one’s qualitative life by realizing one’s creative strengths and personal human needs. It can and is also perceived as a (self)educational process, which occurs in an educational environment that is suitable for the self-expression and individuation of a person. The following article reveals the philosophical and psychological approaches towards the concept of personal individuation. The concepts of individuation of the following authors are being reviewed: I. Kant, F. Schiller, F. Nietzsche, J. Dewey, R. Rorty, G. Jung, C. Rogers and A. Maslow.

Mind, 2013

Book review of *More Kinds of Being: A Further Study of Individuation, Identity, and the Logic of Sortal Terms* (2009, Wiley-Blackwell). By E. J. LOWE.

E-conom

Abstract: Individuation as the process of psychological maturation is associated with the way of the spirit, equal to the ‘narrow path’. Social and worldly adaptation as central aspects of individuation are overvalued. It is generally held that symbolic transformation of unconscious images fulfils a therapeutic function. This view is criticized as a way of upholding the stagnant ego. On the contrary, transformation must be authentic. The notion of ego abandonment in spiritual tradition should be taken seriously. Central to psychology is the integration of the unconscious. But equally important is the opposite process of ‘complementation’. Consciousness is not only synthetic; it has also a ‘sympathetic’ function. Consciousness can give life back to the unconscious and not only empty it of its goods. To this end, a creative form of contemplation is recommended, in the manner of painting or writing. The destruction of the stagnant state of personality, and the riddance of aspects of personality, are part and parcel of individuation. Today, adaptation and assimilation are overvalued whereas negation is undervalued. The Self in Jungian psychology is a towering ideal, a conglomerate of contradictory aspects of personality. At a point in time, the spiritual seeker must abandon the ideal of completeness and begin to negate his profane obsessions, which are nothing but meaningless games of life. At this juncture, the passionate game of creativity is ushered in. Keywords: critique of Jungian psychology, integration, complementation, negation, destruction, spiritual path, art, individuation, apotheosis, alchemy, Gnosticism, Holy Grail, C. G. Jung, Emanuel Swedenborg, Poul Bjerre.

Filo Sofija, 2013

A solution of the problem of a "principle of individuation" 1 Setting the Stage The problem of a "principle of individuation" seems to be one of those philosophical problems that had received many answers before they have actually been properly understood. It possibly harbours many problems under one rubric. Regis (who denies that Aristotle ever sought any "principle of individuation") lists no less than seven: 1. How do we know an individual when we see one? 2. What is it about a description of an individual that enables the description to identify the individual? 3. How do we distinguish one individual from another? 4. How does an individual differ from a universal? 5. What makes an entity the same throughout change? 6. What makes an individual a unit, e.g. one man, as opposed to two legs, two arms, etc.? 9 [Owens Doctr of Being], 183-188. 10 [Regis A's PoI], 160. One possibility is that the saying answers the question "Going by what do I tell one individual from another when I see them?" Answer: "By chunks of stuff". But the chunks of stuff are themselves individuated by the individuals they are the material basis of. 11 In fact, Regis thinks that in the passage in question Aristotle is concerned with a quite different problem, namely, that of the uniqueness of heaven and the statement merely implies that having matter is a necessary condition of individuality, [Regis A's PoI], 159f. 12 Who would then be the "inventor" of many valuable things, including truth as correspodence (adaequatio) and impetus, the predecessor of inertia. For the former see [Aertsen Med. refl. on tr.], 5f. As a matter of fact, Avicenna explains in the VIII chapter of book I, ch. 8 (dedicated precisely to the problem of truth or the true ‫,الحق(‬ al-ḥaq)) of Al-Ilāhiyāt ([Ibn Sina Al-S.]): ‫على‬ ‫يدل‬ ‫الذي‬ ‫العقد‬ ‫أو‬ ‫القول‬ ‫حال‬ ‫منه‬ ‫يفهم‬ … ‫الحق‬ ‫له‬ ً ‫مطابقا‬ ‫كان‬ ‫إذا‬ ‫الخارج‬ ‫في‬ ‫الشيء‬ ‫حال‬ (al-ḥaq … yafhamu minhu hāl al-qaula aw al-'aqda allaḏi yadullu 'alā hāl al-šayʼi fī al-ḫāriǧi ʼiḏā kāna muṭābiqān lahu), "the truth is understood as an enunciation or disposition of the mind signifying an exterior thing and congruent with it", or as it is expressed in the XV-century translation, "veritas … intelligitur … dispositio dictionis vel intellectus qui signat dispositionem in re exteriori cum est ei equalis". The crucial word here is (a)equalis, which is, perhaps, not the best rendering of the Arabic ‫"مطابق"‬ (muṭābiq), which is the participle of the reciprocal (Form III, corresponding to the Hebrew pôʿēl-conjugation) verb ‫"طابق"‬ (ṭābaq), "to be congruent, fitting, to/with," which better that "aequalis" expresses the essence of truth as correspondence. As for the latter (impetus) see [Sayili Ibn Sīnā]. 13 Or in his (Al-Madkhal, Isagoge) to Al-Mantiq (Logic), Part I of Al-Šifā', vol. I, ch. 12 ([Ibn Sina Isagoge]). 14 All translations accessible to me employ here the word "individuality" or its counterparts, but the Arabic original, at least in the Cairo edition of 1960 ([Ibn Sina Al-S.]), reads "ِ ‫ه‬ ‫خصِ‬ َ ‫"ش‬ (šaḫṣihi), which is the Wojciech Żełaniec things individual?" and the denial that it has any sense at all. Individual things are individual purely and simply. Or, to paraphrase Suárez slightly: "Unaquaeque entitas est per se ipsam individuationis principium." ([Suarez Disp. Met. V], 6.1) Or, to quote Leibniz, who in his precocious Disputatio metaphysica de principio individui gave, too, a survey of solutions as well as his own: "Omne individuum sua tota Entitate individuatur" (§ 4., [Gerhardt Leibn. Phil. Schr. 4], 18). 23 This approach, however, solves the problem by overkill (or so it would seem) because, clearly, there is something universal to individuals, even though individuals are not "made of" universals in any vulgar sense of this expression. Suppose that we have been introduced to an individual called "Duro;" if we are not completely uninterested, we shall crave for a bit of information as to what or who Duro is, what it does, what it is like …. If Duro is a bandit, or a dog that answers phone calls, or a registered trademark, then there is something universal that Duro shares with many other individuals. 24 Even the information that a Quinean might give us, namely, that Duro duroizes, 25 does not redeem us from universality, because for each individual, if its name is "N," then N enizes. If, therefore, Duro duroizes, then there is something that universal that Duro shares with all individuals. Yet, Duro is not a universal characteristic itself. The response that Duro is "just an individual and nothing else," if it expresses any information at all, nay, is at all intelligible, does and is so only because there are other objects that are individuals, too: So that there is, after all, something universal that Duro shares with other individuals, namely, individuality. In the unlikely case that Duro should be the only individual there has ever been, could be, and could have been, at least this much is certain that Duro is unlike all other objects that share at least so much that they are not individuals. It appears, therefore, that we can rid ourselves of the spectre of universality, hovering over Duro, only at the price of assuming that there has always been, and could have been, only one object, individual or universal, regardless. This reasoning shows clearly, however, why the above way of putting the problem, namely, by expressing it in the form of the question "What makes individual things individual things?" can, if interpreted in a certain way, lead to an impasse. For if that which makes individual things individual things is something "in" or "about" them, then, if it is something expressible in universal terms itself, it is nothing more than another universal characteristic and hence cannot make anything an individual thing. Or else, if it is not expressible in any universal terms, then it cannot be known at all. 23 See [Cover/Hawth. SaIiL]. 24 In the case of the dog answering phone calls, many merely possible individuals.

Procedia Computer Science, 2016

We present a socio-human cognitive framework that radically deemphasizes the role of individual human agents required for both the formation of social systems and their ongoing operation thereafter. Our point of departure is Simondon’s (1992) theory of individuation, which we integrate with the enactive theory of cognition (Di Paolo et al., 2010) and Luhmann’s (1996) theory of social systems. This forges a novel view of social systems as complex, individuating sequences of communicative interactions that together constitute distributed yet distinct cognitive agencies, acquiring a capacity to exert influence over their human-constituted environment. We conclude that the resulting framework suggests several different paths of integrating AI agents into human society. One path suggests the emulation of a largely simplified version of the human mind, reduced in its functions to a specific triple selection-making which is necessary for sustaining social systems. Another one conceives AI systems that follow the distributed, autonomous architecture of social systems, instead that of humans.

The ability to differentiate individuals from their group memberships (individuation) is useful in forming impressions when social categorization fails to do so. This method is particularly valuable when encountering incongruent social category conjunctions (e.g., female bricklayer). We tested the notion that individuation is initiated when applying cognitively effortful explanatory, emergent attributes to incongruent conjunctions. Incongruent category conjunctions were more likely to be comprised of emergent attributes and individuation moderated the application of these attributes in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, individuation again moderated emergent attribute application for incongruent conjunctions, but cognitive load attenuated the relationship. Allowing or preventing the generation of attributes did not affect individuation for incongruent conjunctions in Experiment 3. This ruled out the possibility that emergent attributes cause increased individuation, but does not rule out the notion that individuation precedes such explanatory attributes. Together these findings suggest that individuating those whose category memberships clash may be applied in the effortful application of explanatory emergent attributes.