Kathy was the most frightened person I have ever seen. When I came into her room that first time she was sitting on the floor in the corner muttering what sounded like a chant. She looked up at me standing in the doorway and her eyes grew wide with terror. She wailed and pushed herself back into the corner and kept straining against the walls as if she wished she could push herself through them. I said, "Kathy, I'm a psychiatrist. I'm not going to hurt you." I took a chair, sat down at some distance from her and waited. For another minute she continued to push herself into the corner. Then she began to relax, but only enough to start weeping inconsolably. After a while her weeping stopped and she began to chant to herself again. I asked her what was wrong. "I'm going to die," she blurted out, hardly pausing to interrupt the cadence of her chant. There was nothing more she could tell me. She continued to chant. Every five minutes or so she would stop, seemingly exhausted, whimper for a few moments, and then resume her chanting. To whatever question I asked she would respond only with "I'm going to die," never breaking the rhythm of the chant. It seemed that she felt she might be able to prevent her death by this chanting and could not allow herself to rest or sleep.

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