Psychic Reality

A concept developed by Freud to denote the level of reality specific to unconscious processes, psychic reality, from an epistemological standpoint, refers to the "object" that psychoanalysis attempts to characterize, understand, and explore. In The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), the concept referred to the force of reality associated with the subject's internal fantasy life, which could oppose and even dominate perception of external reality; it could, in other words, seem more "real" than reality itself. From the outset the...