Chapter 12
Reality Testing
“All theory is gray, but the golden tree of actual life springs ever green.”
—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, 1808
“There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.”
—DOUGLAS H. EVERETT
DEFINITION:
Reality testing is the ability to assess the correspondence between what's experienced and what objectively exists. Reality testing involves “tuning in” to the immediate situation. The best simple-sentence definition of reality testing is that it is the capacity to see things objectively, the way they are, rather than the way we wish or fear them to be. Testing this degree of correspondence involves a search for objective evidence to confirm, ...
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