Somewhere back in my ancient history, I worked with people whose grip on reality was tenuous. They saw things going on around them that other people did not see.

They heard voices that weren't there ? imaginary people criticising them and telling them horrible and oppressive things. In anguish they looked at me with torment in their eyes.

What would you say to such a person?

My early teachers used a term, and they told me I might help such a person by "reality reminding".

That's when you tell such a person statements like, "No, the radio is not really talking to you" or "people cannot read your mind".

Somewhat like Pontius Pilate ? who asked Jesus "What is truth?" ? I now find myself wondering, though, what is reality?

Almost on a regular basis I see some new advance in technology and find it simply amazing. To think that we can now put loads of transistors into a single human cell.

Does anyone recall a television show titled "The Bionic Man"? We laughed at things like that back then, but not now.

Such matters beg the question of realism. Realism is the system of thought that guides a person's thinking and faith with regard to the nature of things, whether they are simply walking down the street on the way to the bakery or whether they be a scientist working in a physics laboratory.

According to the Wikipedia, there are four forms of realism: critical, na?ve, scientific and philosophical.

Critical realists believe that some of what our senses pick up accurately represents objects and events outside of our imagination while other things are illusions, not accurate representations of any external objects or events ? blurred in some way.

Critical realists believe that there exists an objectively knowable reality that is independent of one's construction of it, even while acknowledging the roles of perception and cognition.

When someone looks at a green vase and says, "I see a green monster, but then again, I have been missing a lot of sleep lately, and I don't have my contacts in", they are acting like a critical realist.

Na?ve realists assert that the world is as common sense would have it. All objects are composed of matter. They occupy space and have properties such as size, shape and texture that are detectable through our senses. When a person looks at something, or touches it, that person sees and feels directly; he sees and feels objects as they actually are.

In addition, objects exist whether or not someone exists to observe them. When a person feels a sheet of smooth glass, it feels to him like sandpaper, and then he says, "Watch out for the rough glass", he's acting like a na?ve realist.

Scientific realists, on the other hand, claim the universe actually contains just those properties ascertained in a scientific inquiry ? things like wavelengths and particles ? and that for those things to take form an observer must observe them.

Perhaps you've heard the now somewhat worn assertion that a table is actually a mass of moving molecules and it should be possible, under the correct conditions, for someone to put his or her hand right through it?

That's scientific realism.

Philosophical realists believe in a reality that exists independently of observers. They hold that theories bear out because they have a correspondence to reality ? that theoretical explanations have some correspondence to what actually exists.

I think I'm closest to that last position. When I apply it to doing therapy, it fits nicely because I tend to focus on the "is-ness" of a current situation, and when people stop and take a good look at that, things begin to change. Why? Because they begin perceiving things close to the way they are.

A man or a woman stops to consider the simple behaviour of a wayward spouse. It sinks in, and they stop making excuses or minimising the impact of it. Something shifts.

A person slows down to take a look at what their self-medicating behaviour is costing them.

They begin to see things as they are instead according to the fantasy they've been using to delude themselves and support their habits.

An adolescent gets kicked out of his last-chance school placement and realises the only way to move on is to do what it will take to get a GED. Angry and bitter, he or she publicly blames everyone else, but quietly, and privately, sinks into a depression because the dream of what was going to happen in life goes up in a poof of reality.

I like reality, though. It's solid. It's easier to deal with, because it doesn't depend on me to maintain it.