As we approach the end of the book, I'm getting worried that Simondon may not be able to sew up all the dangling threads he has created. Like a man who sketched a mural too large for the amount of paint he had, some areas are going to go without color. This analogy is the only way I can understand why some of rather clear implications of his theory, implications which would help us grasp its full contours, go either totally undrawn or are only mentioned in passing. So at this point I'd like to approach this third section on psychic individuation from a slightly higher altitude that will hopefully help to bring Simondon's whole theory into better focus. It's even possible that this is how he intended it to be read. In that case, the three sections in this chapter on psychic individuation would be designed to work their way up from the nuts and bolts of the psyche (perception) to its overall form (affectivo-emotive) before finally examining its place as a development inside an ongoing vital individuation. I found this order confusing because it puts the overview that orients us to the whole question of the psyche only at the end of a long discussion about how it operates. But, as counter-intuitive as this may seem, it actually would be just like Simondon to examine in detail how it works before discussing what it is.
Simondon begins this section by introducing a distinction between individuation -- the physical or biological individuation he has been talking about since the start -- and individualization -- which seems to be reserved in this section for describing the psychic realm. While he repeatedly mentioned individualization back in the chapter on biology (pgs. 205, 211, 214 etc...) I didn't note any difference between the two terms at the time. However, it seems that all along Simondon has had in mind that life can be individuated without being individualized, and in fact, this is probably part of the curious 'shrinking' of the purely biological realm I mentioned a while back. Individualization, it turns out, is a step beyond individuation. It is the propagation or continuation of individuation by other means. Though he never puts it quite this way, it seems to begin when the action of the individuated organism starts to have a larger impact on its milieu, creating in turn changes in the organism that then lead to further changes in the milieu, and etc ... What would it mean for this runaway feedback loop to 'stabilize' into a structure in the same way that we've seen other individuations crystallize a metastable structure out of an energetic milieu? In this case, the required structure wouldn't just relate a crystal's surface to its amorphous milieu or even relate a biological individual's interior to its exterior. It would have to relate changes in an interior to changes in an exterior in such a way that we would discover a continuity of identity despite a continually fluctuating boundary that divides the two. This is of course exactly how he described the psychic or spiritual world functioning in the last section.
In other words, like all of Simondon's structures, the structure of the individualized individual would be a relation, but in this case it would be relation of relations -- namely a relation of the individuated individual that constitutes the seed of the interior to the other individuated individuals that we collectively call the exterior. This sort of relation of relations is what Simondon means by the transindividual. He's employing this term literally -- the transindividual is the domain that stretches 'across' individuals and creates relations between individuated individuals who are already themselves relations. However, aside from a alluding to it in an earlier (redacted) passage on epistemology, Simondon never quite explains the individualized individual as a relation of relations (individuated individuals). It's not completely clear to me why he seems to avoid this conclusion. But in the present section he seems to want to deny individualization (ie. psychic individuation) the status of true individuation.
It could be asked if there are individuals other than physical or living individuals and if it is possible to speak of psychical individuation. In fact, it actually seems that psychical individuation is an individualization rather than an individuation, if we agree to designate by individualization a type of process that is more restricted than individuation, insofar as it requires the support of the already individuated living being in order to develop; psychical functioning is not a functioning separate from the vital, but, after the initial individuation that provides a living being with its origin, there can be in the unity of this individual being two different functions, functions which are not superposed but which are (functionally) relative to another, just like the individual with respect to the associated milieu; thought and life are two complementary, rarely parallel functions; everything happens as if the living individual could once again be the theater of successive individuations that divide it into distinct domains. (I, 296)
This is a puzzling passage, because there would seem to be a clear analogy between the way a vital individuation extends a physical individuation and the way the psychic individuation (aka. individualization) extends the vital. In fact, right from the beginning he has characterized every individual (including the physical) as a "theater" of individuation; any individual is defined by its ability to propagate a process of individuation. The only difference between the various levels of individuation seems to be in how they propagate their information. Which brings us directly to another of the glaring omissions I mentioned at the outset. Though he has nowhere summarized this important schema, it seems clear that physical individuation only propagates information locally in space and time. The crystal can only grow at its surface, and only step by step. As an individual, it really has no interior. By contrast, the biological individual can propagate information non-locally in space, but only locally in time. It too proceeds step by step, but since its entire interior can be in interaction with the exterior as the individuation advances, it introduces "remote relays" (pg. 225) in a previously Euclidean space. The individual itself is a sort of non-local synthesis of space. Finally, physic individuation introduces non-local connections in time (and inherits the non-local space of the biological individuation). We'll see this more clearly in a moment, but the psyche is constructed as a synthesis of time, as a joining of the order of the simultaneous and the successive. In a sense, psychic individuation introduces a temporal interior and exterior, where far flung memories and plans become part of me, here and now. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see why he leaves this parsimonious schema as merely implicit in stray passages.
The other implication of reading all the levels of individuation as analogous (as opposed to following the quote and distinguishing the physical and biological from the psychic) is that it allows us to see the domain of the transindividual begins right at the beginning. Every process of individuation is the resonant relationship between a singularity and an energetic milieu. While the first singularity of the physical crystal may be a mere nothing, a tiny symmetry breaking that looks nothing like the crystalline individual that will grow from it, the other steps in this individuation are seeded by the crystal structure itself. The ongoing crystallization of the amorphous pre-individual milieu depends on the crystal itself as a partially formed individual. So the process is not simply a relation of the pre-individual milieu to itself, but more of a synthesis or resonance between the relation of the crystal to its (past) self and the relation of the crystal to the milieu. Even in the case of a crystal, this process of individuation is never finished, but we can always refer to the individual it produces in the instantaneous sense of the present moment. If the transindividual is simply the space of relations between (always unfinished) individuals then it seems that even an ongoing physical individuation would invoke the transindividual. All individuation would end up being a resonance between the pre-individual and the trans-individual. While this would push the psyche back almost to the beginning of time, it creates another parsimonious continuity between the levels of individuation. Individuation has always depended on a feedback loop where the individual as prorduct of individuation is einserted into the process of individuation. Individuation is an inherently historical process (pg. 70). Simondon spends most of the rest of this section examining exactly how this feedback happens with the psyche, or better said, how it creates the psyche. While his discussion pertains specifically to psychic individuation, it seems to me that we could view this not as a radical change in type, but simply as an acceleration and deepening of the same feedback relation present in all individuations. It's as if time becomes thick enough to interact with itself, just as the surface of the crystal acquired a depth to become a living being. Seeing the same process at work throughout all individuations would also fit well with Simondon's idea of transductivity unity and phase transitions.
In any event, though he uses completely different terms to describe it, Simondon makes clear in this section what remained more implicit in the last one -- the psyche at least is clearly a reflexive, recursive, fractal structure. The biological individual becomes the theater of further individuation once it begins to relate changes within to changes without. This allows for a spiritual or psychic realm where the interior of the individual is no longer fixed but variable over time. It's as if the inside splits into two terms -- the prior individual or initial biological individual, and something like a map of how this individual changes in response to a changing world. Here, Simondon describes this as a splitting of the biological individual into two functions -- thought and life, soul and body. But the psychic term here explicitly includes a reference to itself, thus creating a reflexive loop. The self is a relation of relations. It is a relation established between the self and the world, both of which are relations. So the self is the relation between (the relation between the self and the world) and (the relation between world and self). So the self is the relation between (the relation between [the relation between (the relation between the self and the world) and (the relation between world and self)] and the world) and (the relation between world and [the relation between (the relation between the self and the world) and (the relation between world and self)]). Etc ... Which sounds like some avant garde poetry.
The important point here seems to be that the psyche is formed when the biological individual itself splits into individual and milieu in the same way that the pre-individual split into crystal and amorphous milieu. The only difference is that this individuation is ambiguous. It could be looked at either from the perspective of the new psychic individual created with the biological milieu, or from the perspective of the old biological individual who has acquired a new depth of internal milieu. Which side is milieu and which side individual have become interchangeable, which creates an endless circling back and forth between them. So it's not just that the biological individual splits and keeps on recursively splitting, but that we actually begin to lose track of the sides. They remain distinct, but we begin to see how they are always complements to one another that arise in pairs. Who sees this and how we arrive at a psychic synthesis that takes these views as reciprocally related is something I don't totally understand. And yet somehow the psychic individual is finally able to grasp itself simultaneously as a both individual and milieu. It's at this point that it seems to be able to view the entire process of splitting as a synthesis of time in which it unfolds and lives.
The present consists for the being in existing as individual and as milieu in a unitary way; however, this is only possible through the operation of ongoing individuation, which is analogous in itself to the initial individuation by which the somatopsychic being constitutes itself within a tensed and polarized systematic whole. The individual concentrates within it the dynamics that has given birth to it, and it perpetuates the first operation as a continued individuation; to live is to perpetuate an ongoing relative birth. It does not suffice to define the living being as an organism. The living being is an organ- ism depending on the initial individuation; but it can live only by being an organism that organizes and organizes itself through time; the organization of the organism is the result of an individual individuation that can be called absolute; but this organization is a condition of life, rather than life itself; it is a condition of the perpetuated birth that life is. To live is to have a presence, to be present relative to oneself and relative to what is outside oneself. (I, 325)
It's clear that this structure is related to Deleuze's idea of the time crystal. But tracing the similarities and differences would be another project in itself.
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