ABSTRACT
Always pertinent are the methods by which truth is reached and the uses to which it is put. Truth with a small "t" is local, socially constructed, and related to issues of power, status, cultural norms, and practice of the groups to which people belong. While Freud and Klein mythologized an essential human struggle between the libidinal and aggressive drives - between life and death instincts and love and hate, Bion added the fundamental dialectic between the need for emotional truth and the need to avoid psychic pain. To a significant degree, the capacity of the developing individual to tolerate truth seeking reflects the history of the caregivers' interest and success in responding to the child's truth needs. Within nonconscious and pre-rational and irrational realms of experience, nothing is false; simultaneously, people's defenses allow them to deny everything. Truth often hurts, as does the absence of truth.
