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A Developmental Hypothesis of Reality Processing

EALITY TESTING IS THAT EGO FUNCTION which enables an individual to discriminate between mental representations stimulated R by external, objective, manifest events and mental representations arising from internal events, memories, and fantasies. This statement of reality testing in terms of external versus internal stimulus origin continues to have theoretical and clinical utility. On further investigation, the ability to discriminate between internal and external stimuli appears to be a base line or a minimal realitytesting capability that is early and widely achieved. It is reasonable to expect that this complex ego function becomes more highly refined as ego development progresses. In this paper, we propose a developmental hypothesis of the capacity to comprehend reality in the light of current theoretical understanding. Strachey (1957) offers an outline of Freud’s thought on reality testing in his introductory note to the “Metapsychological Supplement to the Theory of Dreams.” As early as 1895, Freud had worked out his basic conceptualizations in this area. The “primary psychical processes” could not distinguish between a percept-an image of external origin recorded by the sensory apparatus, and an idea-a mental image not based on immediate objective reality. In order to make this discrimination, he argued, a delay had to be introduced between stimulus and response. The mental structure responsible for the delay was the “secondary psychical processes” utilizing energy stored in an ego. This design provided time for an “indication of reality,” i.e., some evidence from the perceptual apparatus that the source of the stimulus was indeed external. Such evidence might be provided by a blink, which would eliminate percepts ar-