The idea of human society as shared subjectivity is probably older than the idea of human society as political organisation. The nation presumably pre-existed the state. Society as mind politic probably pre-existed society as body politic.

The subjectivity of the nation means that there is a permanent flow of consciousness between individual consciousness and social consciousness, as the private mind of the individual finds an essential part of its identity in participation in the identity of society, and the public mind of society borrows the powerful idea of selfhood to establish its unique collective identity. The individual self of the citizen is mirrored in the selfhood of society, and the self of society is mirrored in the identity of the citizen.

The mutual self-constituting of the individual and society means that individual psychology and social psychology flow into each other. And where there is psychology there is the possibility of pathology, the social manifestation of individual psychopathology and the internalising in the individual of social psychopathology. Symptoms may go as far as the self-destruction of society, as it pursues the defence of its self against other selves, and the self-destruction of the individual, carried to self-sacrifice by loyalty to the greater self.