The issue of reality in psychoanalysis starts with Freud's questioning of what kind of trauma lies underneath hysteria. Freud's abandoning his seduction theory marked the recognition of the subject as a presence directed by his phantasm and desire rather than his material-external world, which is very different. What really matters is the internal-psychic reality, which corresponds to the subject's personal truth. This is a very important step, because it implies the dominance of the unconscious in the subject's psyche. Saying it in another way, what the subject experiences as true constitutes his internal reality and doesn't necessarily show up in accordance with external reality. Laplanche and Pontalis define psychic reality as: “With this term which is very frequently used by Freud, a certain stability and resistance in the subject's psyche are determined which can be compared to the material reality. What lies underneath is the unconscious desire and the phantasms which bind to it”.