The development of the capacity for reality testing, whose enhancement has been viewed as a central function of education, presupposes both the capacity to focus attention on external and intra-psychic phenomena and the development of organized thought. Reconsidering traditional psychoanalytic views of these two concepts in terms of more recent formulations, attention is defined in terms of the child's attitude toward reality rather than in terms of the means by which mental contents reach consciousness. The development of thought or secondary process activity is also discussed in terms of an adaptational framework which circumvents assumptions regarding psychic energy and its transformation. These two concepts are discussed in terms of the school's role in fostering the child's mastery of reality.
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