Article
Stages in the Development of the Sense of Reality
Entwicklungsstufen des Wirklichkeitssinnes
In this 1913 paper Sándor Ferenczi traces how the child passes from a feeling of omnipotence to the recognition of reality. He describes the sense of reality as developing through a series of stages: an unconditional omnipotence in the womb, then a magical-hallucinatory omnipotence, omnipotence by means of magic gestures, an animistic period, and a period of magic thoughts and magic words, until the sense of reality reaches its height in science. He then applies this scheme to the neuroses, proposing that the wish-content of a neurosis depends on the stage of libido development at which it is fixated, while its mechanism depends on the stage the sense of reality has reached.
Main ideas
- The sense of reality is not given from the start: it develops out of an original feeling of omnipotence, through successive stages.
- Life in the womb is the stage of unconditional omnipotence.
- It is followed by a magical-hallucinatory omnipotence and then by omnipotence exercised through magic gestures.
- An animistic period and a period of magic thoughts and magic words come next.
- The sense of reality reaches its height in science.
- The wish-content of a neurosis depends on the stage of libido development at which it is fixated; its mechanism depends on the stage of the sense of reality.