ABSTRACT
This commentary explores the conjoined but separate nature of inner experience and outer reality and how psychotic distortion can confuse the two. Psychotic minds are challenged to know the difference between inner and outer, self and other. Examples of everyday psychotic operations include extremes of under- or over-valuing self or others, including falling in love. Absolutizing or totalizing perceptions and beliefs about the world is another common example. Hallucination, idealization, and wish-fulfillment can function to ward off psychic disturbance and emotional pain. The author highlights Eigen’s view that the propensity to experience ideal moments and hallucinatory modes of being are constitutive for human life. Human beings have a fundamental capacity to hallucinate, and like any human capacity, it can act in diverse ways—from imaginatively enriching life to horrifically constricting it. The author discusses the importance of assessing how a particular psychosis is functioning—whether it might be serving a defensive or reparative purpose.
