Reliving the Past, Perceptual Experience and the Reality-Testing Functions of the Ego

This paper is an exposition and discussion of certain observations which arose during the analysis of a 28-year-old woman, an acting out hysterical character. The course of her analysis emphasized particular aspects of the development and operation of the reality-testing functions of the ego. The style of her life had involved one man following another in a procession of seemingly chaotic relationships. She would find partner after partner with whom to re-enact her inner fantasies, this behaviour serving simultaneously for the discharge of inner tensions as well as for keeping unconscious the true nature of the fantasies (i.e. serving both wish and defence). This pattern of repeated breaches of reality-testing, in which she relived segments of the past in the present, raised questions about the ego structure in this patient which would allow this to occur.1 As a developmental progression of ego states and ego functions was recovered during her analysis, certain more finely discriminatory reality-testing functions of the ego were brought into sharp focus. It is upon these ego functions, which together can be looked upon as comprising the reality-testing functions of the ego, that I wish to concentrate.

I have divided the paper into three sections. The first is an outline of the aspects of reality-testing upon which I wish to focus. The second is a brief sketch of the patient under consideration and some illustrations of the ego functions and changes in them during her analysis. The third is a discussion of the issues involved, including the historical development of concepts of reality testing.

The ego functions upon which I will be focusing are: (1) the perception of the differentiation of self from object and the broader distinction of internal from external; (2) the perception of differentiated objects; (3) the perception of differentiated states of the self; and (4) the perception of affective experiences in the inner wo