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. Everything that is not collective is individual, everything in fact that pertains only to one individual and not to a larger group of individuals.[“Definitions,” CW 6, par. 756.]
The psychological individual, or his individuality, has an a priori unconscious existence, but exists consciously only so far as a consciousness of his peculiar nature is present . . . . A conscious process of differentiation, or individuation, is needed to bring the individuality to consciousness, i.e., to raise it out of the state of identity with the object.[Ibid, par. 755.]
In the undifferentiated psyche, individuality is subjectively identified with the persona but is actually possessed by an inner, unrecognized aspect of oneself. In such cases, one’s individuality is commonly experienced in another person, through projection. If and when this situation becomes intolerable to the psyche, appropriate images appear in an attempt at compensation.
This . . . frequently gives rise in dreams to the symbol of psychic pregnancy, a symbol that goes back to the primordial image of the hero’s birth. The child that is to be born signifies the individuality, which, though present, is not yet conscious.[Ibid, par. 806.]