Night Waking [antikvár]

1 THE REALITY PRINCIPLE It remains true that social behaviour cannot come about unless the individual has progressed from the pleasure principle to the reality principle. But the statement is not reversible in the sense that this advance itself guarantees socialization. - Anna Freud, Normality and Patkobgy in Childhood (London: Penguin, 1965), p. 145 The swans are by the shore, drifting bright as paper cutouts against waves blurred by dusk. They spend the night murmuring oboe harmonies to each other, a woodwind of reassurance. Ordinary swans, the Queen's swans on the river where we feed the ducks at home, have faces apparently afflicted by some medieval disease, and sleep standing on one leg, heads under their wings like child-free passengers on long-haul flights who can summon night with a nylon blindfold. These sea swans seem to stay awake all night, sailing through the fading light like ships bound for far countries, and they have faces as smooth and neutral as the corps de ballet, faces that can't communicate any level of grief or pain. Perhaps this is an asset in species that mate for life. I glance back at the house. Its façade, dark as the cliff-face at the other end of the island, turns away from the after-light