Individual is just that.  A cowboy, or ideally a child, who can make it in the world on his or her own.  Discovery has nothing to do with others and only to do with self.  And what is in it for me! echoes through the house.  What do I get?  I?  Me?  You really would like me, I am very good and worth being with.  It is me, mine, me and I.  In the prettiest of cases this stage is escaped by the age of ten with many signs of its leaving several years before that.  In the ugliest cases it hangs on, incomplete, through most of life as a nagging selfishness.  While it is somewhat attractive early in life it gets much uglier over time.  Getting stuck in this stage looks like continued attention to self without doing the useful spread of attention that will ultimately lead to Self.

But leaving this stage prematurely results in a fear of other people or a resistance to intimacy.  In The Map we explore how to complete this stage so that you can get on with the dazzling dance of Comparative, the next stage.