reality testing

any means by which an individual determines and assesses his or her limitations in the face of biological, physiological, social, or environmental actualities or exigencies. It enables the individual to distinguish between self and nonself and between fantasy and real life. Defective reality testing is the major feature of psychosis.

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Psychology term of the day

December 19th 2024

regression in the service of the ego

in psychoanalytic theory, the adaptive circumvention of normal ego functioning in order to access primitive material (see primary process), often associated with the creative process. [first described by Swiss-born U.S. psychoanalyst Ernst Kris (1900–1957)]