And it's nothing as conventionally dramatic as drugs or sex with which he tries to escape his anguish.
He told me that he has an interest in the Kabbalah, because "it appeared at a time when the political environment for the Jews was so harsh that they used this philosophy to escape their anguish".
From blue-collar Long Island suburbs like Ronkonkoma and West Babylon, where city firefighters commuted to work, to wealthy Connecticut suburbs like Greenwich and Darien, where trains filled up each morning with investment bankers and traders going to Wall Street, there was no escape from anguish.
This study demonstrates the great contribution of a simple and, to some, superficial procedure that can both help the patient escape the anguish of disfiguration and reduce rancor against the surgeon, who is often blamed for devastating a patient's self-image.
"I would like simply to disappear, to annihilate myself, in order to escape the perpetual anguish that strangles and breaks heart and soul," he wrote.
From blue-collar Long Island suburbs where firefighters live, to wealthy Connecticut towns of lawyers and stockbrokers, there was no escape from the anguish.
Just days after the Grenfell Tower fire, Anh Nhu Nguyen spoke publicly about his anguish at escaping the flames while his family perished.
"Some say it's a coping mechanism," she tells me, a way of escaping one's own anguish by becoming something non-human, something without imperfections.
Common motivations include: to escape from unbearable distress or anguish, to gain relief from tension, to escape a dissociative state, to express a need for help, or to change the behaviour and emotional states of others [ 30].
