Individualism, individuality, the self and psyche

In order to discuss the ideas of individuality in Romanticism, it is useful to distinguish between the concepts of individualism, individuality, the self and the psyche. Whereas individualism demarks a sphere of relative freedom of action for the individual, it does not require a qualitative difference between individuals, nor does it involve a conscious notion of selfhood. Individuality, on the other hand, characterizes an essential feature that makes the individual unique (and not just different from others). This uniqueness—be it a singularity, an infinity or the autonomy of the individual—prohibits a complete subsumption of the individual under some entity or group without an annihilation of that very individuality. The self (le moi, das Ich) is fashioned through the transformation of

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the unique, and thus unrepresentable, individuality into a presentable totality. The prerequisite for the self is self-reflection, that is, a relationship to its own uniqueness that by virtue of this reflection becomes externalized, thereby becoming a subject of presentation and aesthetics. The psyche, on the other hand, does not rely on outward presentation, but instead opens up the inward being as a site for a multiplicity of forces. Using this terminology, the Romantic endeavour can be described as turning individuality into a self, an endeavour that in more than one case led to the formation of the psyche.

For the German Romantics, the demand for a self had two main sources in the ideas of the preceding centuries: Pietism and Kantian philosophy. From Pietism, the Romantics inherited the search for the self and a permanent self-questioning, but in contrast to the Pietists, they did not merely attempt to locate an existing agent, but rather understood the degrees to which the search itself influences the actual nature (and perception) of the self. From Kant, they assumed the idea that all experience and cognition can only be a balance between conceptual processes and sensual perception, thus ruling out a metaphysical perspective for human beings. However, many Romantics attempted to rehabilitate an absolute perception of the individual in its totality by and for human beings.

Beyond mere theory, the ideal of transforming individuality into a conscious self was one of the strongest forces in the development of ideas and of culture as a whole in the period around 1800. The absence of a clear notion of the self led to various forms of behaviour that aimed to prove or compensate for the existence of the self. Specifically, the new self had to respond to two aspects of individuality. First, the self must exist independently and autonomously. Second, the self could only be understood as a radically individual quantity, that is, as the consciousness, history and position of a single person. These two determinations appear to have amalgamated in Romanticism.

One’s own autonomy must be immediately seen and experienced, that is, the independence of the self had to become itself the object of a sensual experience by the individual. Autonomy must be displayed and lived (and not just abstractly, juridically possessed). Emerging genres and cultural trends such as the Bildungsroman, art dilettantism, Romantic love, the rehabilitation of suicide and extreme tourism in the Alps can be seen as examples of responses to these dual demands on the self. Echoes of compulsive demands for the self can also be seen in the invention of ‘addiction’ around 1800 (the medical discourse of addiction begins with Benjamin Rush and Thomas Trotter). What was once tolerated, even celebrated, and, in the worst cases, overlooked as

a minor vice, came to be sanctioned and pathologized in the name of a free and self- controlled self. Thus, when de Quincey discovered opium-induced dream states as a vehicle for reaching what he understood as the deeper layers of memory (Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 1821–2), he vehemently denied the intoxicating and addictive aspects of the drug.

Individualism, individuality, the self and psyche