Technical Applications of a Concept of Multiple Reality

Common-sense reality is not adequate to the tasks of modern physical science.1 This paper is an attempt to examine some of the limitations of common-sense reality in psychiatry.

On the one hand we recognize that our patients' psychological reality at any one moment is a particular pattern of organization of stimuli, and that such patterns are in constant flux. On the other hand, we apply a concept of 'reality testing' in which the reality is the common-sense reality of stable objects, of objects and people with a considerable degree of rigid identity. This degree of rigid identity is a building block of common sense. Yet we are constantly faced with the problem of comprehending—using common sense—an apparent lack of this degree of rigid identity.

For purposes of exposition, I would now like to differentiate comprehending from understanding. We may learn to understand a mathematical formula containing the negative of a square root, but at least most of us, most of the time, will not be able to comprehend it.2 To comprehend something means that it is part of our experience. That means we must feel it, but it cannot be the total of our felt experience. We must grasp with something that is bigger than the object that is to be grasped. To comprehend the problem of identity in psychiatry, the identity of the self, the identity of other persons, and the identity of objects, we must use a conceptual tool which is wider than identity. In order even to describe the development of a reality based on some constancy we need a concept dealing with the organization of stimuli, a concept not taking identity for granted. Arieti (1963) and Artiss (1962, p. 140) are among the authors who have recently dealt with this problem. Artiss describes how the child permits his parents to define reality for him by his granting them the 'naming prerogative'. To present this concept, Artiss uses the device of hypothetical argument between parent and child. The child questions the auth