Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

October 12, 1965. REALITY CONSTANCY: A PRELIMINARY NOTE. John Frosch, M.D.

Reality constancy is proposed as a psychic structure which facilitates the operations of the ego functions concerned with the environment. Its existence lends to these functions a stability and continuity that enables the organism to preserve its identity and orientation amidst alterations and changes in the environment without appreciable psychic disruption or adaptational dysfunction. It arises in conjunction with the internalization and stabilization of environmental images. Although genetically and in its operations it is closely interwoven with object constancy, reality constancy may be justifiably viewed in its later development and functioning as evolving beyond the limits of object constancy. One sees many cases—for instance, some highly successful business executives—where reality constancy is highly developed while object constancy is of poor quality. Further, one finds cases of disturbed reality constancy that appear to derive from more than poor early object relations. For example, a patient with fantasies of world disintegration had not only experienced faulty object relations early in childhood but had undergone an actual experience of environmental disintegration at age four which had tremendous traumatic effect upon her. Pleasant and unpleasant environmental experiences aside from those with the love object and unfolding ego functions, such as the capacity to differentiate animate and inanimate, play an important role in the evolution of reality constancy.

Defects in reality constancy contribute to the development of feelings of unreality, difficulty in experiencing new and experimental situations, and the preservation of reality contacts. Dr. Frosch cites the case of a girl who at a party felt things around her to be unreal after she was complimented on her appearance; she could not believe in the reality of what was said. In childhood her mother had also compliment