[Vital contact with reality]

From the standpoint of existential phenomenology, the contact with reality lies in the very phocus of theory, being closely related to another basic conception: that of being-in-the-world. In order to ratify those conceptions, the author reviews some concepts imported from Kurt Lewin's Field Theory, among which: a) vital psychological space, embedding the subject and in close interchange with him; b) intrapsychic regions, having, to a certain extent, autonomous functions, but being related to each other and integrated into the higher unity of the subject. As both systems are interdependent, any modification of the equilibrium of one of them reverberates into the other's, and changes the general conditions of both of them. Reviewing, at the same time, Minkowski's views on schizophrenia, the author sets forth the production of an inner world that becomes autonomous and possesses a degree of reality that overwhelms the true outer world. There is not only the splitting from reality, but the creation of a whole fantastic field, in which the individual participates with all his vital availability. Both views lead to a similar contention: that in some pathological states, the primal link man-real world, is replaced by a new inner correspondence, focused on the imaginary and having effects similar to those of the real world.