Here we are 13+ years later ... I think you could make a 4-square chart of Character vs Utility and Objectivist vs Secular and be surprised where you put the people you know.

I know very few Objectivists at all, and those only online. I have not much Utility need for other people. One of my hobbies is numismatics, and I do go to local meetings, for instance, but I have no "numismatic friends" to whom I would turn for "numismatic advice" or "numismatic support."  The same is true of my other active hobby, astronomy. I was a member of the local club for two years. I even placed half a dozen articles in the newsletter in addition to interviewing half a dozen local leading lights to record their contributions, histories, and views on the future of the hobby. I let my membership lapse and never talked to anyone from there again.  We have Objectivist Meet-ups here in Austin. I have been to maybe a dozen in the last six years, attending in clusters of involvement. As much as I enjoyed the intellectual engagement, I did not make any friends. 

But I do have friends of character. Many of their personal values are very different from mine. We met through the Texas Military Department. Not one is an atheist, an egoist, or an individualist (though a couple say that they are "libertarian"). They understand and accept duty, which Ayn Rand roundly condemned (though not in her speech at West Point). But they have character.  They have personal integrity, i.e., they are morally integrated. Just for one aspect, millions of Americans are "patriotic" but only 1% of them serve. These friends of mine do not serve blindly. They are educated, literate, thinking, conscious people who have been  or are operationally successful in life outside of the military. (Not everyone in uniform merits my approval. We have our slackers; but they stand out as individuals who are in the wrong place; and no one likes a goldbrick.) You can have all kinds of faults. I know that I do: one of my NCOs showed me a picture of myself in uniform on the "Foxhole Atheists" website. He does not approve of my metaphysics, but he still invited me out for beer. I am smart and I work hard and when I am wrong I fix it. To me, those are aspects of my character that supersede any social utility I might have demonstrated by walking papers from office to office.

Whether someone is an individualist or a collectivist is a matter of psychology, not ideology.

I don't agree with that.  Individualism has a clear meaning as an ideology.  That does not take away from the fact that a person's psychology can reflect individualistic or authoritarian traits.  They are different subject areas despite the abstract rendering of a common theme in each one.

The failure to recognize this can lead to further faulty reasoning, like that shown in saying, "Libertarians are collectivists -- at least some of them."  That ignores the fact that acceptance of the principles of libertarianism means being an individualist in the political realm.  And with that said, it is a kind of conflation to say that they are collectivists.  Collectivism in politics means the initiation of force and is, therefore, contradictory to individualism in politics (respect for individual rights).  Fuzzy thinking.
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"Individualism regards man—every man—as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being."  Ayn Rand, Virtue of Selfishness

In that statement Rand touches on metaphysics, epistemology, morality and politics.
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"The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain."  Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual

In that statement, Rand displays an intellectual orientation towards the individual (as opposed to a group) based upon the mind.
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Individualism can be looked at inside the political, the cultural, the moral, the epistomological and the psychological subject areas.  If knowledge were imagined to be a large, layered structure of some sort, then "individualism" would be seen as a vertical swath running through many of the horizontal layers. 

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Individualism is most important in the political realm because it can recognize our individual rights - implementing the moral concept that our lives are an end in themselves.  (Or its political importance can be due to collectivism (individualism's absence), for violating those rights - treating individuals' lives as a means to some other end). 
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Individual rights are, by definition, moral principles.  And morality is a more fundamental level than politics - being the level upon which politics rests. 

Individualism also exists in parts of the culture quite apart from politics.  Are organizations organized around a recognition of individual efforts and results?  Are individual choices seen as important?

Epistemologically, individualism arises out of choice - that place where human nature, epistemology and the beginnings of morality intersect.  Groups don't choose - individuals do.  Choice is an individual mental exercise. 

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Hopefully, choices are born of sound reasoning, but too often, sick cultures, bad premises, and/or neurotic defensiveness of an individual will encourage emotionalism and a substitute of political correctness and/or peer pressure in place of individualism (independent critical reasoning) in the psychological process of choosing. 

So, individualism is also a proper subject for psychology.