Identity, the Group and the Social Construction of Reality

However important establishing a relationship with reality may be for the individual's survival, we should never underestimate the danger individuals perceive reality to pose for them. The danger to which I refer is not the danger of this or that version of reality, but of reality itself, which is to say of a sphere of existence outside the individual's subjective control. Because of the threat reality poses, the individual's life project as often as not becomes that of dismissing reality rather than living creatively in relation to it. In this paper, I explore the problem coping with reality poses for the individual and the role groups play in the individuals struggle to do so.