Psychoanalysis works with three views of reality: factual reality, psychic reality, and coconstructed reality. The history of clinical psychoanalytic thinking about trauma demonstrates that these realities are often in conflict with each other and that they have cycled in use without any consensus developing about which is most correct. These three realities have also been used without consensus by the broader mental health field and in the study of myths, indicating that these realities are fundamental ways of understanding ambiguous psychological data. The uncertainty as to which reality is most correct is resolved by recognizing that it is part of the human condition to be constantly differentiating and integrating these realities, and so we best help our patients by engaging with them in the process of applying all three, rather than by making definite static decisions about which is most applicable. This approach is demonstrated with clinical material.