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More generally, unconscious fantasy thinking could be a major distorting factor in perception and in RT (Arlow, 1969). Reality related issues are discussed in most of Heinz Hartmann ’s papers (1964) including external reality (in his proposal of the average expectable environment, 1939), and also regarding cultural factors (1944), moral values (1956) and, ‘ inner reality testing ’ (1947, 1953, 1956). The latter can be “…summarized as insight, psychological mindedness, and awareness of inner states. Inner RT , then, would include awareness of these inner states, and an accurate appraisal of them” (Hurvich, 1970, p. 307). Hartmann (1939/1958, 1953) also identified reality relatedness and associated processes as having roots in primary ego autonomy. Further developments within Ego Psychology aimed to integrate the primary autonomy origins view with psychological development, by assuming two developmental lines - one as a component of primary autonomy, and the other as an aspect of the inner/outer self and object differentiation (Jacobson 1964) aided by separation-individuation processes (Mahler, Pine and Bergman, 1975). Closely ‘re-reading’ Freud’s evolution of the concept, but without the tools Ego Psychology offered, French Laplanche and Pontalis pronounced the key inner/outer discrimination as too complex and “it’s meaning is still indeterminate and confused” (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1967/1973, p. 384). Addressing the very complexity, David Rapaport (1950) added reflective awareness (awareness that one is aware) as a component of inner RT, and emphasized that it facilitated distinctions between states of consciousness, such as ideation, with and without awareness. Also included are subtle varieties of conscious experience in relation to percepts, memories, assumptions, and assessment of whether something is true or false, certain or uncertain. From a psychoanalytic standpoint, inevitable unconscious influences on perception and memory render an inter-penetration of outer and inner realms to varying degrees (Loewald, 1960), so that perception of the external world and of others includes “transference” elements (Grubrich- Simitis, 2010). In a framework where massive psychic trauma has occurred, it has been recommended that support for the reality of some powerfully denied perceptions and experiences take precedence over interpretation of the psychic meaning of the experience at a certain phase of analytic work (Grubrich-Simitis, 2010). Peter Fonagy has expanded reflective awareness, to an aspect of mentalization , and into reflective function , which includes both awareness of self and ego states and aspects of mental states of others (Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, & Target, 2004). A related concept of reality constancy (Frosch, 1966) is conceptualized as the achievement of a degree of organization, continuity and stability of reality relations’ components, parallel with object constancy . The specification of a developmental line labeled reality processing (Robbins & Sadow, 1974) underscores the acquisition of more complex aspects of internal and external reality resulting from an interaction of the two. Closely associated concept is the sense of reality . Paul Federn (1926) described a sensation based on an awareness of ego boundaries, which allows the subject a “sensing” of
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