“… at some deeper level there was no sense of handicap, or incapacity, but a feeling of calm and completeness, of being fully alive, of being a soul, deep and high, and equal to all others. Intellectually, then, Rebecca felt a cripple; spiritually, she felt herself a full and complete being.”

There is also the practice of lobotomy, now historical of course and deeply out of fashion. For some it was a disaster, as I understand it. But for others it brought a much-needed peace.

Best wishes for the novel. Is it anything to do with bonobos?

Still, it would have been nice, if my father had been present in my life. A mature, wise, good-natured, witty, solid and stable man. Who loved me, without any condition. Simply because I was his little girl. For me, I think, this concept of a father figure stands for trust and safety.

The last sentence hits a nail, Steve, ‘you have to be your own father in this world’. Not always that easy, though.

Hence there is a perfect climate. A perfect mother. Perfectly available nourishment. Prefect freedom from fear. Perfect mutual respect between persons. Perfect nurturing in early life leading to perfect preparation for adulthood.

Any imagination able to penetrate the last on that list would default to a picture of a perfect father, the one who protects, teaches, shares skills, warns, encourages and blesses us. As opposed to the one who ignores, teases, scares, brutalises, cheats and defrauds us of our birthright…

It’s a vital part of all literature until last century when the demon father entered politics and almost laid waste the entire world.

Leonard Shlain attempts to solve this and many other mysteries in his book, “Sex, Time, and Power: How Women’s Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution”. He argues that homo sapiens is a peculiar sidetrack of evolution. We are who we are because of various problems and the need to find practical solutions. (1) Childbirth dangerous to women. They need control over their sexuality. (2) Human menstruation drains the woman of iron. For childbirth she needs it in large quantities. (3) Red meat contains iron. The woman will favour a hunter who brings her meat. (4) She teaches the man that sex is the cause of childbirth. The father recognises that the child resembles him. (5) The father takes steps to ensure that the mother stays faithful to him so as to give birth to his children older. (6) the woman takes steps to keep the man around so that he can continue to bring her meat throughout her pregnancy and thereafter.

And much more. I have tried to condense the essence of his entire book into a few points. I don’t necessarily agree with or approve his arguments, but his book has the merit of pointing out questions that need to be answered, even if his answers are scarcely more than wild surmises.

I will ask you in return, Steve, why it should be that a boy or girl actually needs a father. I never had one, only a succession of two stepfathers who, in the manner you sketch out, did not do the full duty of being fathers. My wife never knew her father and her mother refuses to divulge any details about him.

Life is a challenge. It certainly would be possible to take the victim’s view and say we were damaged or lessened by the deal we actually got. But I cannot see how it is a useful view. We have to get on with it.

I don’t accept what you say about overcompensating, either for the boy or the girl. I won’t deny that it may happen because myriad are the ways that we learn how to be and thrive in this world. This is the very odd human predicament, so different from other animals. In summary, it is not easy live as a human. The astonishing thing is, we all find some way or other to make the best of it. We are not to be blamed for the various props and stratagems we adopt.

Everyone knows of the separateness. In some ways the connectedness may simply support the separateness, in the sense that I need allies, I need to court the person who may look out for me in ways I can’t perform for myself.

But there is something beyond all this, and it appears to play little part in today’s culture – at any rate in secular culture. I won’t speak in praise of religion because I am not in the flock. I’ll grant those who are the benefit of the doubt and suppose that they feel a connectedness. But I shall speak from my own experience only.

I sense at times of heightened awareness that we are all cut from the same cloth. I don’t mean just human beings, but all creation. We are part of the All. This is not a philosophical or theological theory but something dimly sensed; and comfortingly reinforced by the testimony of certain others, even if they are relatively rare.

I don’t see this connectedness as taking place in sleep particularly. Our dreams can be all sorts of stuff. I don’t see it in the form of any physical gregariousness even. I see it as going to a place beyond the everyday concerns. It doesn’t happen to me very often in terms of time cut up into weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds. I wrote on my blog recently about an experience that probably lasted three seconds, or maybe less. But something of the feeling of it has stayed with me, weeks later. Or in other cases, years, decades.

I repeat, it is not a connection between myself and particular persons but a connection with something larger. I don’t have any problem with calling it the All. In that space I can meet you, touch you, be close in ways that cannot be pictured in ordinary terms. Where ‘you’ is probably anyone, or any created thing.