The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 20, 1951; No. 2: Otto E. Sperling. 'Illusions, Naive or Controlled.'

An illusion is naive if the deception either of our senses or of our minds is complete and not contradicted. On the other hand, if we permit ourselves to give in to this illusion only to a certain degree and for a limited time, and retain the ability to recognize that this is an illusion, or if we are oscillating between belief and disbelief, we are dealing with what the author would like to term a 'controlled illusion'. In the same way that we speak of frigidity or impotence in sex, so we have a right to speak of a frigidity in the arts, music, or the beauties of nature. The impoverishment of the ego in these cases is expressed by an inability to form illusions. Controlled illusions are a necessary lubricant in our civilization. They are even more important in the transference relationship, in the love of children, in adult love, and in euthanasia. Naive illusions lead to traumatic disenchantment, or to conflicts with the environment. The cases of a religious fanatic and of a Nazi are presented from the point of view of naive illusions.

It is a naive illusion to believe in absolute values. The individual derives his intrinsic values from the id and from the super-ego. Instrumental values—work, schooling, money—are characteristic of the operations of the ego. In so far as traditions and social institutions are integrated in the super-ego, there are a great number of similarities in the systems of values of people of similar origin. Yet many yield to the illusion that their system is the right one, that their values were discovered and not awarded.

If parents present their values as absolute and their children are confronted with a different system of values in school, delinquency, a continuous conflict, or a controlled illusion about the local value of both systems might ensue.

A scientist cannot be free of a value system, but he can have controlled illusions about its absoluteness. Controlled illusions are a relatively safe compromise between the reality p