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It goes without saying that external reality exists as something that is independent from our thinking. This fact, I believe, compels us to take into account our patients' individual and gradual acknowledgement of their external reality while we daily listen to them.
What role do we give to external reality when we have a patient lying on the couch? Is it useful at all to even mention external reality in a psychoanalytic setting? Does it belong to an analysis conducted in the climate described by Ilany?
The issue of external reality in relation to internal reality has been contended from the earliest days. This has happened not only in the specific field of psychoanalysis, but in all human sciences, going as far back as the philosophers' clash between “idealists” or “subjectivists” and “materialists” or “objectivists”. Attempts have been made in all human sciences in order to try to bridge the gap, to harmonise opposing tendencies to gain a better understanding.
Perhaps this is the moment to remember some of Freud's thoughts about external reality:
In Two Principles of Mental Functioning, Freud remarks how, as adults, living in real life is part of our destiny: “… every neurosis has as its result, and