Reality and its Attributes as Psychoanalytic Concepts: An Historical Overview

I have tried to review by way of an historical overview the nature and the development of the concept of reality and of its attributes and of linked conceptualizations from a psychoanalytic perspective. I have shown that, while, after the very earliest period of psychoanalytic conceptualizing, that is, with the formulation of psychoanalysis as essentially a psychology of the drives and their vicissitudes (and of the defences against them) the nature and the qualities of reality have never been—until recently—a central psychoanalytic preoccupation, they have nonetheless from the beginning played a role that can be historically traced and set as context for our expanded modern day concerns.

Along such lines, I have traced the following reality and reality related concepts through their vicissitudes from their psychoanalytic beginnings: reality-testing, the reality principle, the distinction(s) between external and internal reality, the nature of (the construct) reality, the dimensions of (external) reality, reality constancy, and the nature of the break with reality in borderline and in overt psychotic illness, with differentiation under that heading of the relationship to reality, the sense of reality, and the capacity to test reality. In so doing, I have not specifically written about such other reality-related psychoanalytic constructs as depersonalization, derealization, dissociation, ego boundaries, etc. I do think though that the sense in which they interrelate with the main constructs that have been defined and delineated is evident in this essay from the context in which they are discussed.