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This paper proposes to examine some aspects of the concept of reality as it is used within psychoanalytic theory. There are many uses, contexts, definitions, meanings, and emphases that it receives. Some indication of the ubiquity of this concept is seen in the following expressions which are found to be associated with it in topical index references: sense of, acceptance of, testing, principle, development, and fantasy, relativity of, in schizophrenia, adaptation, distortion, external, existential, psychological.
Various writers, directly or implicitly, have defined what “reality,” or more precisely, “external reality” means to them. The most common interpretation is a physicalistic one which implicitly or explicitly equates it with the “external world,” the part of existence physically outside the body.1,10,12,13,14,22 Some authors, aiming at greater specificity, define it as the non-motivational determinants of behavior,3,15 others divide it into social and environmental determinants,17 permitting the definition to include ideas, values and other non-material environmental features.16 Fenichel says that external reality is not “a spatial concept but refers to ‘factual,’” a concept which in turn he defines as something regarded as real by more than one person.7
In what follows an attempt is made to explore ramifications of the reality concept in some of its various usages. This variety can reflect and create differences in interpretation of theory, in personal bias, and in attitudes toward life and contemporary culture. Interpretations of the reality concept both conceal and reveal philosophical assumptions about man and his place in nature, about how