Individuality
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1. Etymology
Individuality names the qualities or characteristics that distinguish one person from another. Related: personality; individuation; vs collective.
2. Plain summary
By individuality Jung means the peculiarity and singularity of the individual in every psychological respect—everything not collective, everything pertaining only to one person. It has an a priori unconscious existence and becomes conscious only so far as awareness of peculiar nature is present; a conscious process of differentiation—individuation—raises it out of identity with the object.
In the undifferentiated psyche, individuality is subjectively identified with the persona but actually possessed by an unrecognized inner aspect—commonly experienced in another through projection. When intolerable, compensating images appear: psychic pregnancy / hero’s birth—the child to be born signifying individuality present but not yet conscious.
Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common individuality motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jung’s CW contains only these):
distinguishing qualities; peculiarity / singularity; not collective; a priori unconscious; conscious via individuation; vs identity with object; persona false identification; projection of individuality; psychic pregnancy / child symbol; distinct from individualism.
3. Academic elucidation
In analytical psychology individuality is singularity-to-be-made-conscious—Definitions territory. Descent Press keeps Sharp in §4; Samuels has no dedicated head. Prefer CW 6 ¶¶755–756, 806.
4. Lexicon
Sharp (1991)
Individuality. The qualities or characteristics that distinguish one person from another. (See also personality.) By individuality I mean the peculiarity and singularity of the individual in every psychological respect. … A conscious process of differentiation, or individuation, is needed to bring the individuality to consciousness… The child that is to be born signifies the individuality, which, though present, is not yet conscious.
(Sharp, 1991) — cites CW 6 ¶¶756, 755, 806 in Sharp’s lemma.
Samuels, Shorter & Plaut (1986) — no dedicated individuality head
(No dedicated Samuels head.) Related under individuation / persona / collective
5. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive
See also: individual; individualism; individuation; persona; collective; projection; child; hero.
References
Samuels, A., Shorter, B., & Plaut, F. (1986). A critical dictionary of Jungian analysis. Routledge.
Sharp, D. (1991). Jung lexicon: A primer of terms & concepts. Inner City Books.