Psychosis, disintegration of the self, has been variously described. Winnicott, in his spare, sometimes elliptical fashion, called it “discontinuity of being,” ruptures of psychological integrity in time and space. Anna Freud described varieties of anxiety, one of which she attributed to “the strength of the instincts.” The child, conceived of as a vessel displaying variable tolerance for pressure from within, can sometimes be overwhelmed, flooded by its own impulses or emotions, and begin to lose its rivets, come apart. In this process the previously acquired skill of evaluating reality is lost, though sometimes it was never secured in the first place. It is distressing to witness a familiar person displaying grotesquely unfamiliar ways. (14 pp.)