“[...] The complaint he made all along was that he could not become a 'person'. He had 'no self. 'I am only a response to other people, I have no identity of my own.' (We shall have occasion to describe in detail later the sense of not being one's true self, of living a false self [Chapters 5, 6].) He felt he was becoming more and more 'a mythical person'. He felt he had no weight, no substance of his own. 'I am only a cork floating on the ocean.' [...] 'I was merely her emblem. She never recognized my identity.' In contrast to his own belittlement of and uncertainty about himself, he was always on the brink of being overawed and crushed by the formidable reality that other people contained. [Ontological insecurity: James, a chemist]”