WordNet
n. (psychoanalysis) the governing principle of the ego; the principle that as a child grows it becomes aware of the real environment and the need to accommodate to it [ant: pleasure principle]
Wikipedia
In Freudian psychology and psychoanalysis, the reality principle is the ability of the mind to assess the reality of the external world, and to act upon it accordingly, as opposed to acting on the pleasure principle.
Allowing the individual to defer (put off) instant gratification, the reality principle is the governing principle of the actions taken by the ego, after its slow development from a "pleasure-ego" into a "reality-ego": it may be compared to the triumph of reason over passion, head over heart, rational over emotional mind.
Usage examples of "reality principle".
He has been proclaimed as the great prophet of the pleasure principle, and yet also as the firm and rigid upholder of the reality principle.
As we get older, and life becomes more complicated, we start to modify the pleasure principle by what Freud called the 'reality principle.
The bleakness, the evil and pain in this world, the fact that it is a deterministic prison controlled by a demented creator causes us willingly to split with the reality principle early in life, and so to speak willingly fall asleep in delusion.
But from that tradition we gained our crafty distrust of the reality principle as well as the rather singular notion of an Only Begotten Son.
How many people, like Kongrosian, could break with the reality principle?