Daniel: I have some thoughts I'd like to share that I feel are very relevant and fundamental to overall human development and self-mastery. Perhaps one of the most overlooked, or at least underrated, aspects of human life and behavior is "socialization." Social identity precedes self-identity. Social consciousness precedes self-consciousness. To master and fully realize self-identity and self-consciousness, social identity and social consciousness first have to be mastered and fully realized. All living animals in nature are similarly endowed with a certain degree of social consciousness. But, unlike humans, they do not have the capacity for self-consciousness or self-identity. Before self-consciousness and self-identity can be fully realized and mastered, the deepest realities and truths of human socialization and human social existence must first be fully comprehended, internalized, experienced, emotionalized, and then ultimately mastered and manipulated in the service of self-realization and self-consciousness. As far as psychology is concerned, "social psychology" is one of the most important, fundamental, and relevant realms of psychology to be explored. The profound, universal, and historical process of socialization that an evolving organism is subjected to on its path toward sophistication and superiority is, for whatever reason, marginalized and diluted as an object of analysis of human behavior and human nature. The modern experience of "individuality" is historically novel, and we're most likely just barely scratching the surface of human individuality and emotional independence. Again, I believe that most, if not all, natural human "pathologies" are, directly or indirectly, related to the issue of socialization. If I permit myself a dramatic and speculative example: Take Jesus Christ, and his doubtless complex relationship with his Jewish people at the time. The Jews were (and still are) the most "socialized" group of humans in history. For reasons that perhaps aren't entirely clear, and that are much better suited to a scholar or expert on Jewish history or Jewish life, the Jews' long history is such that they collectively subjected themselves to a profound, severe, and even pathological degree of social cohesion and social connection among, within, and between themselves as Jews. And I think this process (of "socialization") finally culminated in a social convulsion and rupture within Jewish life, and that social convulsion and rupture was Jesus himself. It was almost as if the Jewish people had reached some kind of social limit or social boundary, or some kind of social cliff edge, among and between themselves, as the product of their long and self-imposed hyper-socialization. A type or personality or character like Jesus could only have emerged from a community of people like the Jews. Why? Because he could only have emerged from a place and reality and experience of profound, severe, and pathological socialization, of "over-socialization", whereby some element of natural "individuality" was repressed, suppressed, or constrained (and which, remember, can only be constructed on top of socialization, even perhaps at the expense of socialization). The connection and relationship between human psychology and human socialization is, I strongly believe, so deeply entangled, that it's almost impossible to separate them as processes. There are so many different dots to connect here that I simply don't have enough time right now to go through it all. But, I'd like to again restate the most fundamental point here, that hopefully partially reveals and exposes the nature and truth of human self-identity, self-consciousness, and self-realization: Technically speaking, socialization and social identity and social consciousness form the natural basis and foundation of self-identity and self-consciousness. If the former aren't fully mastered and seized, the latter can't hope to be.