Psychoanalytic literature tells of a woman who felt faint whenever she sat in a library. Surrounded by books, she would develop nausea and could gain relief only by leaving their vicinity. It was not, as might be supposed, that she was averse to books, but rather that she wanted them and the knowledge they contained far too badly, that she felt her lack of knowledge far too strongly and wanted to have read everything on the shelves at once—and because she could not, needed to flee her unbearable ignorance by surrounding herself with a less knowledge-laden environment.
