Individuation

Individuation is the development of one's own abilities and the search for one's own values. This means that the term is often synonymous with that of the Self-actualization. The conflict of individuation vs. Dependence is seen as a major source of mental illness.

What is the individuation?

With the concept of individuation, psychology describes the path to a self as its own whole. Individuation is understood as a process of becoming whole, which allows people to find their own uniqueness and individuality.

Through this process, the person becomes the individual that he really is and is independent of others. In addition to the development of one's abilities and possibilities, this process also includes becoming aware of one's own individuality. After individuation, the person experiences himself as something unique and realizes himself as something of his own.

Individuation as a psychological concept goes back to C. G. Jung, who saw the process for as a lifelong process of approaching oneself. With his understanding of individuation, Jung differentiated himself from Sigmund Freud's views on the same topic and tended to favor Alfred Adler. In his remarks on individuation, Jung emphasized above all the redemption that defines the concept. With the individuation process, people can finally act as they feel. In this way, for Jung, individuation is ultimately a release from external constraints. US psychiatrist and psychotherapist Erickson combined individuation with hypnotherapy for the first time and in this way used the unconscious as a resource for self-development.

Function & task

People grow up in social communities and receive norms, values ​​and constraints from these communities along the way. In this way he adheres to the values ​​of other people, which do not necessarily correspond to his own values, sometimes without questioning. This phenomenon is in conflict with his individuality.

Individuation corresponds to coping with and processing this conflict. To cope with the conflict, the individual questions the norms and values ​​of others, such as parents and friends, and disregards them if necessary. The search for your own norms or values ​​is one of the most important factors in this process. The individual must learn to disappoint expectations or to break certain prohibitions that do not correspond to them.

Adjustment to others is necessary to a certain extent for socialization. If this basic level is exceeded, however, it can have unhealthy effects on the development of the individual. With individuation, people are released from the unhealthy effects and organize their personality more freely. The aim is to improve the internal structure.

For Freud, individuation corresponds to a life path that repeatedly calls for active and conscious conflict management in the sense described. Problems keep cropping up and people have to be responsible for decisions over and over again. Individuation frees people in their decisions from what others say they should do or what would be right for others and lets them listen to themselves to find out where they will find the right decision for themselves.

Milton H. Erickson also followed individuation with his specially developed hypnotherapy. There are now questionnaires that measure the level of development of individuation, such as the PAFS-Q, which is based on personal authority in the family system. In this questionnaire, self-development relates to an individuation in the family life of several generations.

The psychoanalyst Margaret Mahler has also dealt with individuation and above all describes child development as a process of detachment and individuation. For them, the process of individuation is a sequence of developmental steps and aims at individual characteristics.

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Illnesses & ailments

The psychodynamic approach recognizes so-called basic conflicts and their processing as an essential part of every human development. In some cases, mental disorders of any kind are assigned to one of the eight basic conflict types in order to work out a treatment. It is assumed, so to speak, that psychological problems can always be traced back to inadequate coping with one of the eight types of conflict.

The first of these types of conflict is the dependency vs. Individuation, which, in the extreme case, allows people to seek a relationship with a high level of dependency and, in the opposite extreme, always allows them to maintain emotional independence, so that they can never fulfill their suppressed desire for attachment.

The fact that all mental illnesses can actually be traced back to one of the eight basic conflicts is highly controversial. At least, however, the human being is a community animal who nevertheless wants to fulfill itself and want to experience its individuality. These irreconcilable basic human needs certainly harbor the potential for psychological conflicts and can therefore certainly favor psychoses or depression, or at least contribute to their development.

For example, those who do not realize themselves at all and only experience themselves dependent on a community can be prone to depression. The same applies to those who accept absolute insolation for their individuation in order to realize themselves. In order to find a balance between independence and dependency, one has to come to terms with the basic conflict of individuation vs. Dependency required, which deals with the current problems arising from this basic conflict.