The concept of psychic reality--how useful?

The author argues that Freud coined the phrase 'psychic reality' to indicate how neurotic patients and others treat unconscious psychic concepts and fears as if they were real. They respond to the challenges of everyday life not in terms of objective reality, but rather in keeping with their inner 'psychic' reality. With the development of different schools of thought in psychoanalysis, opinions as to precisely what constitutes the contents and character of unconscious mental functioning differ enormously, to the extent that there is no general agreement as to the nature and quality of unconscious mental elements. Psychoanalysts do not have a shared view of what constitutes psychic reality, with the result that genuine scientific interchange has become increasingly difficult and attenuated. The author considers that what is required is the exploration and enunciation of an agreed upon methodological approach to the interpretation of clinical data and thence to the formulation of mutually acceptable psychoanalytic concepts.