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The terms 'reality', 'reality-sense' and 'reality-testing' are frequently used in psycho-analytic literature, but very seldom defined. As a rule there is no serious objection to this practice, but where the terms are themselves the subject matter of investigation, some preliminary definition seems unavoidable. There is, of course, some risk of begging the question by a too rigid statement: nevertheless, I propose on this occasion to adopt the less usual course of provisionally defining these terms before submitting them to investigation.
Thus
1Reality-sense is a faculty the existence of which we infer by examing the processes of reality-testing.
2Efficient reality-testing, for any subject who has passed the age of puberty, is the capacity to retain psychic contact with the objects that promote gratification of instinct, including here both modified and residual infantile impulse.
3Objectivity is the capacity to assess correctly the relation of instinctual impulse to instinctual object, whether or not the aims of the impulse are, can be or will be gratified.
The nature of reality-sense has so far been investigated from three different points of view. The first of these can be studied in Ferenczi's classical paper on the subject (1). Ferenczi's paper was based on inferences drawn from (a) a behaviouristic study of infants, and (b) knowledge of mental mechanisms observed during the analysis of adults. The conclusions he arrived at are too familiar to require recapitulation, but is it to be noted that from the systematic point of view his presentation was incomplete in the following respects. With the exception of the 'stage of unconditioned omnipotence', which he related to the 'oral' phase of development, no precise indication was given of the nature or complexity of the wish systems involved. Again, he described a series of relations (mostly reactions), to the object-world, but gave no corresponding description of the nature of the instinctual