The modern, and now postmodern, world is the first period of history where a large number of people have been allowed to take their private lives and identities seriously. Many of our parents did not even have a language for it. There is a wonderful movement into individuation here, but there is also a diminishment and fragility if that is all we have. (Individuation, by the way, is a positive word to describe an appropriate sense of self, ego, and boundaries. Individualism, however, refers to the exaggerated sense of self, ego, and overprotected boundaries.)
