The Approach to Reality

Since reality is the object of scientific research as well as the goal of psychoanalytic work with patients it is valuable to assess and integrate thinking on the subject and to grope for answers to many questions that naturally arise from a survey of the literature. What do we mean by reality? How do we approach it, and what keeps us from approaching it? What does frustration do for our apprehension of it, and what instrument does man possess which can enable him to master the reality to the extent at least of removing some of his frustration? How do introjection and projection operate, and what part do instinct and narcissism, two not too well defined concepts, play in helping us to an understanding of reality? How does the child's reality differ from ours?

Reality here is defined as what exists regardless of one's perception of it. We are acquainted scientifically with our five senses to know they do not give us an entirely true and complete picture of reality, and that we can disabuse ourselves of the notion that reality is easy to find. The failure of our perceptive organs resulted in such sciences as physics, chemistry, etc., which introduced us more and more to the external world.

We find however another reality—not objective and external but subjective and full of meaning which we call internal or psychic reality. It is made up of fantasies, feelings, desires, and impulses which are often not directly related to objective reality, but which can usurp the importance of the latter when it becomes too frustrating, too lacking in pleasure and security. A religious person speaks ecstatically of the “reality” of his experience, the psychotic of the “reality” of his hallucination and all of us know the vivid “reality” of our dreams—indicating how profound are our capacities for distortion of objective reality—or the replacement of objective reality—by subjective reality.

From the beginning external reality is too much for us. The child must first have the warmth of hu