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THE ESSENCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS CAN BE conceptualized from a variety of perspectives. One is in terms of its insistent dedication to the constant elucidation of the distinction between fantasy and reality. Hartmann (1956), in distinguishing various meanings of the concept of reality testing, underscored that one meaning or usage referred to the ability to discern subjective and objective elements in our judgment of reality. Arlow (1969) said of this: "Learning to do this is an unending process. Essentially this is the principal task which the analyst poses to his patient" (p. 29, italics added). Central to our formulation of this distinction from the very beginning has been our understanding of our much-used construct, psychic reality, and in this sense this concept has long been one of the fundamental building blocks of psychoanalytic thinking and activity.
This panel's effort at reconceptualization of this construct has served well to demonstrate that this conception of psychic reality, which has perhaps through long and familiar usage seemed to many of us to be so unambiguous and so eminently useful, on closer scrutiny becomes—as do so many other of our