“Before it became clear to us what had happened, he was already too far out. We could do nothing. We only saw how the undertow was dragging him faster and faster away from the shore. Saw his futile and exhausting struggle to touch the bottom beneath his feet.

It was only blind instinct which drove him to try and save his life: in his mind he had cut himself off from reality. When, in spite of this, a flash of knowledge as to his situation forced itself upon him, he told himself that the rest of us were even worse off. And when we still took the whole matter so lightly – ! He would certainly still be clutchin this conviction at the last moment when the gurgling whirlpool sucked him down.

It had always been this way. Dependent like a child upon admiring affection, he had always taken uncritical friendship for granted, even with those who were indifferent or actually hostile. He had always acted upon this assumption, yet, in an unconcious effort to create friendships which perhaps did not exist, not without a certain compliance towards the interests of others, and, at the same time, a fear of a collision with reality which migh rent asunder his web of illusions. When things he had said were quoted against him, he denied having ever said them. And when this denial was called by its right name, he interpreted this as a symptom of his critic’s lack of mental balance: as time went on, psychosis became an eer commoner word on his lips.

Just what was it we felt when, for the first time, we realised that he had gone too far out ever to be able to get back?”

– Dag Hammarskjold, “Markings”