Mannheim has distinguished four main aspects of individualization. These are: (i) individualization as a process of learning different from other people, (ii) individualization on the level of new forms of self regarding attitudes, (ii) individualization through objects, and (iv) individualization as a kind of deepening into ourselves which implies receiving into our experience of ourselves and sublimating the individualizing forces around and within us. All these processes are entirely different phenomena.

1. The first aspect of individualization consists in the process of becoming different from other people. The external differentiation of individuals leads to the formation of new groups. The division of labour characteristic of modern industrial society accelerates the emergence of such groups. These groups permit more or less individuality in their members according to the intensity and volume of internal organization and regulation.

Besides these two factors, i.e., external differentiations and division of labour there is still a third factor which leads to external differentiation of types. This is lack of contacts. The people isolated from other people develop different types of personality. Democratization, free competition and social mobility also further individualization as a process of becoming different.

2. Individualization also consists in becoming aware of one’s specific character and in the rise of a new kind of self evaluation. The individual comes to feel himself as superior and separate from others and evaluates himself in high terms. He begins to regard his life and character as unique.

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The preconditions of this process of individualization are: “a strict differentiation and distance of the leading elites; the organization of the group in such a way as to provide for certain circles a chance to become despotic; the existence of the isolated milieu of a court where the despot can have the illusion of being powerful if not almighty.

” These preconditions make the person a tyrant whose power rests upon physical power and spiritual coercion. History abounds in examples of tyrants who regarded themselves as superior to all and felt that their life and character are unique. It is a feeling of self-glorification.

The following passage from the annals of Assurbanipal (885-860 B.C.) vividly illustrates this attitude of self-glorification. “I am the king. I am the Lord. I am the sublime. I am the Great, the strong; I am the famous, I am the Prince; the Noble, the War Lord, I am a lion, I am God’s own appointed. I am the unconquerable weapon, which lays the land of enemies in ruin. I captured them alive and stuck them on poles; I coloured the mountain like wool with the blood. From many of them I tore off the skin and covered the walls with it. I built a pillar of still living bodies and another pillar of heads. But in the middle I hung their heads on vines. I prepared a colossal picture of my royal personage, and inscribed my might and sublimity on it….My face radiates on the ruins. In the service of my fury I find my satisfaction.”

3. The third aspect of individualization is in the individualization of the wishes through objects. Some people come to have a fixed feeling towards certain people and objects. The psycho- analysists have given it the name of ‘libido fixations.’ The peasant and the landed aristocrat are more settled in their wishes than the rich mobile types of the city. Many factors influence the individual choice such as wealth or the process of modern production and distribution. Social mobility also may bind the individual to specific wishes. Family conditions also shape the wishes of the individual.

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4. The feeling of estrangement of becoming solitary may lead an individual to introspection and inwardness. In big cities where there is an atmosphere of unfriendliness, indifference and confusion and the community does not exercise any deep influence upon its members this feeling of estrangement is more peculiar. Under such conditions there develops in the individual a feeling of privacy, partial isolation. It leads to introspection, which is another form of individualization.