The Reality Principle

When I was in graduate school studying child development, a friend and I would go to a local playground and watch the adult caregivers and children. Inevitably, it would be time to go. Often enough, the child would want to stay: tough stuff! I imagine the following: the parent says, “We have to go so I can cook dinner before Mommy comes home.” And we all remember the child’s response, “But I don’t want to!”  Dialogue is met with screaming, yet the crying protests fail. Then the horror: The larger person would pick up the smaller and carry it away. The smaller, we remember, might feel like “an it”, a thing, not an autonomous person. Our will, the child’s will, was met with what Sigmund Freud called the reality principle. Many of us adults today are equally frustrated by the reality principle as we are carried off to places we do not want to go. The world is taking many of us down a road we do not want to walk on. Reality is hard. The good news is that we adults have more power than children do. We can use words and take action to effect change. We have the power to protest, lobby, and vote. We can work to shape our environments, even as we accept the very real limitations confronting us.