It was not the voices in themselves that prompted such anguish with disastrous consequences, but the disruption of something beyond, and something that might be considered innate and particularly human: a sense of self, of the privacy of the self, and a precarious notion of free will.

At one time or another, we all try to silence painful emotions. But when we succeed in feeling nothing we lose the only means we have of knowing what hurts us, and why.

Her paranoia shielded her from the catastrophe of indifference.

There are various ways to circumvent depressed, anxious feelings. It’s not uncommon, for example, to exploit sexual fantasies, or to use hypochondriacal worries. Elizabeth employed her disasters to calm herself – they were her tranquilliser.

A lot of the suffering we will witness in life will be greater than ours. There’s the question of what we can do to help and the different question of what to do when we can’t help. Often one thinks of another’s suffering: my dear friend you have so much life due you, how can this be happening? (I’m at Mass General waiting to see Emily.) For the sake of loyalty we keep in our minds the imagination of their private anguish. We cycle through all the emotions with them but often we also think—or behave as if we think—the abyss is remote for us.