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Historical Reality

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"Historical [[reality]]" refers to the [[real ]] facts and events of the [[past ]] as they occurred historically, whether they were [[external ]] or [[internal ]] to the [[subject ]] confronted by [[them]]. In general, historical reality stands opposed to wishful [[fantasies ]] and to everything within the [[mind ]] that may be said to answer to the [[pleasure]]/unpleasure [[principle ]] and its principal [[mechanism]]: [[hallucinatory ]] [[wish]]-fulfillment.
To better [[understand ]] the relevance of historical reality to [[psychoanalysis]], it is important to realize that the [[conflict ]] between the two fundamental principles of the [[mental ]] apparatus—the pleasure/unpleasure principle and the reality principle—also has an impact on the past and on the subject's [[ideas ]] [[about ]] the past.
On the one hand, [[history ]] as retained in [[memory ]] is capable of [[being ]] [[reinterpreted ]] and transformed on behalf of the pleasure/unpleasure principle by means of the [[individual]]'s fantasies, wishes, and defenses. A [[fantasy ]] that has been cathected and activated by hallucinatory wish-fulfillment behaves as an actual reality, interfering with the ego's ability to differentiate real events from imagined and hallucinated ones. This view supports the [[belief ]] in memory's poor reliability when it comes to historical reality, since any memory is likely to have been reorganized on behalf of the plea-sure/unpleasure principle.
On the [[other ]] hand, Freud—and many other [[psychoanalysts ]] as well—was never able completely to overlook the impact of certain [[traumatic ]] historical events in the etiology of mental [[suffering ]] and symptomology. While history can be transformed for the sake of the [[libidinal ]] [[economy ]] of the subject, the [[repression ]] of the historical reality would be incomplete, since it would leave traces as [[psychic ]] events unfolded. The [[reality principle ]] must also be capable of being applied to the past and of opposing the [[pleasure principle]]. In a way fantasies themselves might be said to indicate the [[existence ]] of a kernel of historical reality.
Fantasy and historical reality are not strict opposites. Fantasies, as [[Freud ]] wrote early in his career, are of "mixed blood"—intermediary formulations that fall somewhere between lived reality and the way in which the subject has given it [[meaning ]] within his libidinal organization of the [[moment]].
Thus in addition to [[representative ]] forms of the "memory" of events and facts in the past, forms that are likely to be subjected to different kinds of "deferred" reinterpretations and wishes, there are ways of directly recording lived [[experience ]] that bear [[witness ]] to the impact of historical reality. The [[work ]] of reconstructing historical reality is, therefore, potentially possible, and indeed one of the essential goals of [[psychoanalytic ]] work (Freud, 1937d) is to extend the influence of the reality principle to the past and its [[representation]].
Historical reality and mental reality are not, therefore, strictly at odds. The reality of experience marks history with an imprint that has [[significance ]] within the current psychic organization, in [[particular ]] during [[childhood]], on the basis of [[infantile ]] [[sexual ]] theories and the [[narcissism ]] of infantile [[animism]]. Debate continues to erupt, however, within psychoanalysis, over the disjunction between historical reality and mental reality, and this suggests the fragility of the [[synthesis ]] mentioned above. It would seem that the question of the distribution of what is part of actual history—and therefore, "[[outside]]" the subject—and what is part of [[desire ]] still [[needs ]] to be re-examined, as if the boundary between [[inside ]] and outside was fluid and admitted a degree of undecidability essential to mental functioning and internal conflict.
RENÉ ROUSSILLON
See also: [[Construction ]] de l'espace [[analytique]], La; ; Fantasy; History and psychoanalysis; Internal reality/external reality; [[Screen ]] memory; [[Seduction ]] scenes.[[Bibliography]]
* Freud, Sigmund. (1899a). Screen memories. SE, 3: 299-322.
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