Author: Vladisav Jovanović
Status: Preprint
Version: v1.0 (2026-03-11)
Jung’s individuation is usually described as integrating the shadow, pulling back projections, and becoming more whole. This paper reframes individuation as a modern control problem: how to build a self that cannot be cheaply rewritten by social pressure, incentives, or narrative influence. In a world where coherence is cheap and contact is costly, people become easy to steer through validation systems and algorithmic feedback loops. I propose an operational definition of the Self as an invariance constraint [a non-negotiable internal constant]: something that stays stable across contexts, moods, and rewards. This invariance shows up as fixed worth [worth not tradable for belonging, safety, or coherence], a structural floor that blocks the system from selling reality for short-term relief. Individuation is then the process of installing and protecting invariances that keep the psyche correctable under contact without becoming capturable by cheap coherence. The paper connects Jung’s topology (persona/shadow/self) to AI-safety language (alignment, reward hacking, manipulation), arguing that non-programmability is not mystical freedom but a structural result of bound commitments, irreversibility, and internal worth constraints. (See also: Three Realities; Truth as Load; The Presence Equation; The Cybernetics of the Shadow.)
individuation; Jung; self; invariance constraint; fixed worth; sovereignty; programmability; cheap coherence; coherence; contact; binding; irreversibility; Structural Intelligence; AI safety; reward hacking; manipulation; capture