'In the course of my talk with her, the girl-a pathetic, beautiful Ophelia clad only in a torn nightgown-pulled me down to the couch where she had seated herself. 'Let us be close,' she said. 'I have made a great philosphical discovery. Do you know the difference between closeness, likeness, sameness, and oneness? Close is close as with you; when you are like somebody, you are only like the other, you and he are two; sameness-you are the same as the other, but he is still he and you are you; but oneness is not two-it is one, that's horrible.-Horrible,' she repeated, jumping up in sudden panic: 'Don't get too close, get away, from the couch, I don't want to be you,' and she pushed me away and began to attack me. Some minutes later she became elated again. 'I am a genius,' she said, 'a genius. I am about to destoy all my books'(on social science). I don't need them, to hell with them. I am a genius, I am a genius.' (Her husband was a social science teacher.) When I took her in an ambulance to the hospital, she became calm, subdued, and depressed. 'I am dead now. Larry won't kill himself,' she said, taking out a little amulet, a tiny crab enclosed in a small plastic case. 'This is my soul,' she said, handing it to me. 'My soul is gone, my self is gone, I lost it. I am dead. Take it, keep it for me till I shall come out.' Then, in sudden panic: 'I don't want to die,' and she began to attack and to beat me, as though I had assaulted her, only to fall back again inter her depressed, humble mood.'

-Dr. Edith Jacobson American psychoanalyst