Shes Come Undone free essay sample

Come Undone (1992) tells the story of her life through the experience of television and how it warped her sensibilities and took the place of her parents in creating values by which to live. She suffers from eating disorders and is institutionalized. The novel is also written in the first person, which means that Dolores herself is telling the story. This may lead to issues of an unreliable narrator — is television really the central moment in her life? Are her memories of her early childhood, which are all based around television, even accurate. As Dolores notes at the beginning: â€Å"Dolores, look! † my mother says. A star appears at the center of the green glass face. It grows outward and becomes two women at a kitchen table, the owner of the voices. I begin to cry. Who shrank these women? Are they alive? Real? Its 1956; Im four years old. This isnt what Ive expected. We will write a custom essay sample on Shes Come Undone or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The two men and my mother smile at my fright, delight in it. Or else, theyre sympathetic and consoling. My memory of that day is like television itself, sharp and clear but unreliable. (Lamb 1992, p. 4) Speaking from the vantage point of a forty year-old woman reminiscing about her life, the issue of unreliable emerges a number of times, but ultimately it is clear that Dolores can be believed to the extent that she herself is aware of the complications of memory, especially in a life as full as trauma as hers. The story takes Dolores from a child living in a small town, to a rape in adolescence, through an attempt at college to find love through deceit, to time spent in a mental institution, to her release and attempts at forging a life of her own. Her parents divorce comes at a time when she is navigating her way through adolescence and most needs their support. Her body is changing, her feelings are confused, and she needs someone to care for her and guide her through this difficult time in life. Unsure about why her parents are divorcing, Dolores is angry with her father for his departure and subsequent remarriage. Preoccupied with her own grief the heartache of losing a child, the reality of her husbands unfaithfulness, and the loss of her husband and marriage Doloress mother is emotionally unavailable to her daughter. Eventually, the mothers hospitalization and confinement to an institution leaves her daughter in the temporary care of a less-than-loving grandmother. At a critical point in her development, adolescence, Dolores has her innocence stolen. She becomes a victim of rape; the incident causes a host of difficulties and ultimately leads her to attempt to take her own life. Jack Speight is a young, attractive, personable disc jockey. He drives a convertible sports car and lives with his wife in the apartment above Dolores. He takes advantage of Doloress low self-esteem, spending time chatting and teasing her with his smile, giving her rides to and from school, and generally making her feel good about herself. Since her fathers departure, Dolores has longed for male attention. After he explains that two incidents in which he fondled Dolores are just his way of fooling around, Jack forcibly rapes Dolores. He immediately threatens to kill himself and his wife if Dolores tells anyone about what happened. Doloress immediate response after the rape is to bathe, in an effort to not only wash away the blood from the rape, but to wash away the shame that overwhelms her. Doloress mother chooses not to press charges again Speight. She asks Dolores to pretend the rape never took place. Doloress grandmother treats the teen as if she is a dangerous stranger. She acknowledges the rape only once, using the phrase that business with him (Lamb 1992, p. 120). She begins to indulge Dolores, not as a victim, but as someone on whose good side she felt safer ( Lamb 1992, p. 20). After one brief session with a psychiatrist, Dolores refuses to continue treatment and begins to suffer the consequences of her silence. She becomes depressed, develops an eating disorder that causes her to balloon up to 257 pounds, is angry, bitter, and once again, all alone. Even after marrying, she is bullied by her husband into having an abortion, and who himself is a sexual predator. Ultimately, Dolores believes that the r ape is what made her come undone and with the help of her second husband, she hopes to regain her life. Axis I Dolores clearly suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to her rape and the lack of social support both before and after it. She also suffers from poor impulse control, which explains the indulgences that led to her eating disorder, her ill-considered marriage, her solitary same-sex encounter with a woman who admired and appreciated her obese body, and her suicide attempt. The disorder may also be considered a separate disorder, specifically Binge Eating Disorder. Dolores engaged in what is called emotional eating after her rape, which means that her relationship to food was profoundly altered — it was seen as a source of comfort (in much the same way TV was previously in her life) Dolores is also suffering from depression for much of the course of her life. Her extreme interest in television from an early age and the distance from her parents suggests a craving for instant gratification and reduced desire/drive for physical activity from early on. She was at least experiencing mild depression (dysthymia) early in life, due to her parents divorce. Her suicide attempt is certainly a significant sign of deep depression, which can be easily traced back to her rape. The trauma turned a mild depression into a significant, perhaps even profound depression. Axis II Dolores is of average and perhaps above average intelligence. She shows no signs of mental retardation. Doloress obesity, her intense interest in television, and her cleanliness rituals especially post-rape suggest some level of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Her inability to form lasting relationships and unfamiliarity with many basic social signals — including those that revealed to readers at least that Speight was a predator, as was Doloress first husband — suggests some placement on the autism spectrum may be appropriate. Dolores should be tested for Aspergers Syndrome. Axis III Doloress obesity, even if she loses the weight, may have long-term health effects. Heart trouble, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, diabetes, joint and back pain, and every other issue that could emerge from a drastic weight gain of over 100 pounds can emerge. Dolores may also experience fertility problems due to extreme weight fluctuations. The desire to lose weight, especially given the possible OCD and need for instant gratification printed above, can also lead to yo-yo dieting, binge disorders, and other problems common to attempting to lose weight quickly. Axis IV Doloress own narrative highlights the importance of television in her childhood. In many ways, Dolores was typical of the post-World War II suburban middle class. After a long Depression and the rationing of war, her generation was born into relative privilege. The television became the center of both the new consumer-oriented society and family life, leading to significant social dislocation. In addition to television, the postwar era saw a rise in the status of women, which led in turn to an increase in sexual ideas and divorce. Naturally, the power to divorce and too freely choose ones sexual partners is a social positive good, but in the 1950s and early 1960s the nuclear family was in flux due to these social issues. Dolores was thus abandoned by her father and spent much of her early life looking for a replacement father figure. Her mother, ill herself, did not have the social support network to maintain either a standard of living or a loving home environment for Dolores. Eventually, Dolores is shuttled off to a grandmother who is both emotionally distant and out of touch with the realities of changing American society. Dolores grew up in an era of changing sexual mores and was not adequately prepared for becoming a sexual being. This is not to blame the rape on her; simply put, she could not even conceive of herself as a sexual victim due to male-dominated social rules meshing with changing sexual mores. She thus blamed herself and took the trauma out on herself by drastically changing her body. Her lack of a father figure and experience with sexual trauma led her to find a husband that is also distant and as it turned out a sexual predator attracted to young girls. As an obese woman, Dolores experienced a same-sex encounter, as she felt uncomfortable around and repulsive to men. Same-sex sexual encounters are not deviant or a sign of mental illness, but do show the extent of the changing sexual mores in society during Doloress youth and adulthood. Finally, Dolores came of age before de-institutionalization in the 1980s, and thus spent seven years institutionalized, including several years as an impatient. This would likely not have happened had she been born twenty years later, and had she been born ten years earlier, Dolores may have had an even longer stay under institutional care. Her institutionalization may further hamper her career goals and economic status and could thus have an indirect impact on her general health. AXIS V 51 Two defense mechanisms Dolores uses in the course of her life include undoing — which is so profound the book is even named after it — and humor. Doloress weight gain was essentially an attempt to undo herself as a sexual being. This is clearly a response to the rape, but also has a deeper root; she has had almost no satisfactory physical contact. When she asked her grandmother to hug her, for example, The request seemed to startle her, but she obliged me. Her small body felt stiff and unnatural. . . . I sobbed and shook against her. Her body wouldnt relax. (Lamb 1992, p. 41) Her size undoes her negative thought: that there is something wrong with her as a human being that makes her unlovable. With the extreme weight gain, Dolores gives herself an excuse to be alone — nobody loves her or wants to be close to her because of her physiciality, not because of what she is as a person. Her second major defense mechanism is humor. Indeed, Shes Come Undone is readable despite all the horrible things because Dolores as the narrator is so funny. When remarking on her dubious memory in the early going of the book, she nonetheless insists that the TV delivery men were Richard Nixon and David Eisenhower. Her pursuit of Dante through stolen letters is another example of a behavior that would seem almost frightening had she not put such a light spin on her actions. The text of Shes Come Undone can be seen as an extended use of humor as a defense mechanism, though toward the end she does come to a realization about the centrality of her rape as regards her current plight. From the point of view of Eriksonian development, we can see that Dolores failed at some of the basic crises of development. In her middle childhood, she faced the crisis of industry or inferiority. Her parents, being distant, and TV, being aspirational, instilled within her great feelings of inferiority. As an adolescent, she also experienced role confusion rather than a cemented identity as a young woman. In one telling moment in the book, Dolores begins to menstruate — a classic rite of passage for young girls — and tells her mother, who responds Thats great, Dolores. Thanks a lot. Thats just what I need right now, (Lamb 1992, p. 21). This is a solid attack on Doloress identity as a woman and a sexual being, and obviously a major part of her problems to come. Subsequent to adolescence, Dolores failed other crises points from an Eriksonian perspective. She chose isolation over intimacy with her obesity and her cruel putdown of her female lover, Dottie. Her pursuit of Dante in college involved chicanery, as she intercepted letters from Dante to her college roommate and took the roommates role in Dantes life. Deception is at the heart, then, of her first major consensual romantic and sexual relationship — isolation was chosen over intimacy. Now she faces generativity versus stagnation. One can say that the telling of her story now, at age 40, is generative, but it remains to be seen is Dolores can keep from stagnating. From a Freudian point of view, Dolores has an Electra Complex. She desires her distant and then missing father, and resents her mother for driving him away. As an adult, her obesity is a stand-in for pregnancy — women with the Electra Complex which for their fathers to impregnate them in order to overcome penis envy. Upon marrying, Dolores chooses a man much like her father, and he demands that she has an abortion. Thus, she is robbed of the chance to come to terms with her penis envy, having been denied the penis, ultimately, by her husband, who is a stand-in for her father. The Freudian mode also explains the obesity, her theft of her college roomies letters and then boyfriend, and much of the rest of her life. According to Freud, penis envy leads to an undeveloped superego, where societys rules (such as rules against gluttony, homosexuality, deceit, cruelty, etc. ) are injected into the personality. Doloress hunger for her fathers penis is so profound that she ruins her life in an attempt to finally claim it for her own. Further, in order to attract a man like her father, Dolores became much like her mother Bernice (and grandmother Thelma). She is often distant and sarcastic, belittling of others, and is in poor physical shape due to her overeating and obesity. In these ways, she mimics her mother, who was also in poor health, who distrusted her husband (albeit for good reason) and who responded to Doloress attempt to experience love with sarcasm, alienation, and isolation. The TV was the surrogate for motherhood in Doloress early life. Dolores was treated within a mental hospital, both as an inpatient for years and then as an outpatient. While Dolores did attempt to commit suicide at one point — again mimicking her mother, who died in a freak accident — years of institutionalization did little for her. Ultimately, she was treated during an era where single women were still considered somewhat deviant (despite the social revolution of the womens liberation movement happening concurrently) and thus the institutionalization was thus essentially a form of warehousing. It says more about Doloress intelligence and untapped inner resources that she was able to shift toward outpatient status and then, at age 40, finally get on to the life that had been disrupted years before. A humanistic approach to therapy, along with some behavior modification for her eating disorder, likely would have helped Dolores see the centrality of the rape in her life, and would have better allowed her to acknowledge her victimhood in order to transcend it. Further, psychiatric intervention should have happened earlier in Doloress life, at least as early on as the period immediately after her rape. In that era, however, psychology was still seen as somewhat suspect, and Bernice was simply not interested enough in Dolores to make sure she got the help she needed. Dolores Price, for all her problems and traumas, was an intensely interesting person, full of wit and a drive to overcome her own obstacles. This was an illuminating novel to read because psychological and psychiatric practitioners often only see people at their worst, when they come into the office. Its too easy to conceive of ones clients as just a collection of problems to be worked through. Indeed, the necessary professional detachment of a therapist of any sort virtually guarantees this. Shes Come Undone, despite the titular third-person she, is a first-person narrative. An articulate, somewhat self-aware, and ultimately humorous client who is able to go back over her own life and see the problems, the triumphs, and the mistakes with an unjaundiced eye is a rare thing. Obviously, Dolores and her circumstances are the creation of a master novelist, but nonetheless the novel serves as a reminder that even in therapy, we are often only seeing the tip of an iceberg. Shes Come Undone free essay sample Shes Come Undone (1992) tells the story of her life through the experience of television and how it warped her sensibilities and took the place of her parents in creating values by which to live. She suffers from eating disorders and is institutionalized. The novel is also written in the first person, which means that Dolores herself is telling the story. This may lead to issues of an unreliable narrator — is television really the central moment in her life? Are her memories of her early childhood, which are all based around television, even accurate. As Dolores notes at the beginning: â€Å"Dolores, look! † my mother says. A star appears at the center of the green glass face. It grows outward and becomes two women at a kitchen table, the owner of the voices. I begin to cry. Who shrank these women? Are they alive? Real? Its 1956; Im four years old. We will write a custom essay sample on Shes Come Undone or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page This isnt what Ive expected. The two men and my mother smile at my fright, delight in it. Or else, theyre sympathetic and consoling. My memory of that day is like television itself, sharp and clear but unreliable. (Lamb 1992, p. 4) Speaking from the vantage point of a forty year-old woman reminiscing about her life, the issue of unreliable emerges a number of times, but ultimately it is clear that Dolores can be believed to the extent that she herself is aware of the complications of memory, especially in a life as full as trauma as hers. The story takes Dolores from a child living in a small town, to a rape in adolescence, through an attempt at college to find love through deceit, to time spent in a mental institution, to her release and attempts at forging a life of her own. Her parents divorce comes at a time when she is navigating her way through adolescence and most needs their support. Her body is changing, her feelings are confused, and she needs someone to care for her and guide her through this difficult time in life. Unsure about why her parents are divorcing, Dolores is angry with her father for his departure and subsequent remarriage. Preoccupied with her own grief the heartache of losing a child, the reality of her husbands unfaithfulness, and the loss of her husband and marriage Doloress mother is emotionally unavailable to her daughter. Eventually, the mothers hospitalization and confinement to an institution leaves her daughter in the temporary care of a less-than-loving grandmother. At a critical point in her development, adolescence, Dolores has her innocence stolen. She becomes a victim of rape; the incident causes a host of difficulties and ultimately leads her to attempt to take her own life. Jack Speight is a young, attractive, personable disc jockey. He drives a convertible sports car and lives with his wife in the apartment above Dolores. He takes advantage of Doloress low self-esteem, spending time chatting and teasing her with his smile, giving her rides to and from school, and generally making her feel good about herself. Since her fathers departure, Dolores has longed for male attention. After he explains that two incidents in which he fondled Dolores are just his way of fooling around, Jack forcibly rapes Dolores. He immediately threatens to kill himself and his wife if Dolores tells anyone about what happened. Doloress immediate response after the rape is to bathe, in an effort to not only wash away the blood from the rape, but to wash away the shame that overwhelms her. Doloress mother chooses not to press charges again Speight. She asks Dolores to pretend the rape never took place. Doloress grandmother treats the teen as if she is a dangerous stranger. She acknowledges the rape only once, using the phrase that business with him (Lamb 1992, p. 120). She begins to indulge Dolores, not as a victim, but as someone on whose good side she felt safer ( Lamb 1992, p. 20). After one brief session with a psychiatrist, Dolores refuses to continue treatment and begins to suffer the consequences of her silence. She becomes depressed, develops an eating disorder that causes her to balloon up to 257 pounds, is angry, bitter, and once again, all alone. Even after marrying, she is bullied by her husband into having an abortion, and who himself is a sexual predator. Ultimately, Dolores believes that the r ape is what made her come undone and with the help of her second husband, she hopes to regain her life. Axis I Dolores clearly suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to her rape and the lack of social support both before and after it. She also suffers from poor impulse control, which explains the indulgences that led to her eating disorder, her ill-considered marriage, her solitary same-sex encounter with a woman who admired and appreciated her obese body, and her suicide attempt. The disorder may also be considered a separate disorder, specifically Binge Eating Disorder. Dolores engaged in what is called emotional eating after her rape, which means that her relationship to food was profoundly altered — it was seen as a source of comfort (in much the same way TV was previously in her life) Dolores is also suffering from depression for much of the course of her life. Her extreme interest in television from an early age and the distance from her parents suggests a craving for instant gratification and reduced desire/drive for physical activity from early on. She was at least experiencing mild depression (dysthymia) early in life, due to her parents divorce. Her suicide attempt is certainly a significant sign of deep depression, which can be easily traced back to her rape. The trauma turned a mild depression into a significant, perhaps even profound depression. Axis II Dolores is of average and perhaps above average intelligence. She shows no signs of mental retardation. Doloress obesity, her intense interest in television, and her cleanliness rituals especially post-rape suggest some level of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Her inability to form lasting relationships and unfamiliarity with many basic social signals — including those that revealed to readers at least that Speight was a predator, as was Doloress first husband — suggests some placement on the autism spectrum may be appropriate. Dolores should be tested for Aspergers Syndrome. Axis III Doloress obesity, even if she loses the weight, may have long-term health effects. Heart trouble, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, diabetes, joint and back pain, and every other issue that could emerge from a drastic weight gain of over 100 pounds can emerge. Dolores may also experience fertility problems due to extreme weight fluctuations. The desire to lose weight, especially given the possible OCD and need for instant gratification printed above, can also lead to yo-yo dieting, binge disorders, and other problems common to attempting to lose weight quickly. Axis IV Doloress own narrative highlights the importance of television in her childhood. In many ways, Dolores was typical of the post-World War II suburban middle class. After a long Depression and the rationing of war, her generation was born into relative privilege. The television became the center of both the new consumer-oriented society and family life, leading to significant social dislocation. In addition to television, the postwar era saw a rise in the status of women, which led in turn to an increase in sexual ideas and divorce. Naturally, the power to divorce and too freely choose ones sexual partners is a social positive good, but in the 1950s and early 1960s the nuclear family was in flux due to these social issues. Dolores was thus abandoned by her father and spent much of her early life looking for a replacement father figure. Her mother, ill herself, did not have the social support network to maintain either a standard of living or a loving home environment for Dolores. Eventually, Dolores is shuttled off to a grandmother who is both emotionally distant and out of touch with the realities of changing American society. Dolores grew up in an era of changing sexual mores and was not adequately prepared for becoming a sexual being. This is not to blame the rape on her; simply put, she could not even conceive of herself as a sexual victim due to male-dominated social rules meshing with changing sexual mores. She thus blamed herself and took the trauma out on herself by drastically changing her body. Her lack of a father figure and experience with sexual trauma led her to find a husband that is also distant and as it turned out a sexual predator attracted to young girls. As an obese woman, Dolores experienced a same-sex encounter, as she felt uncomfortable around and repulsive to men. Same-sex sexual encounters are not deviant or a sign of mental illness, but do show the extent of the changing sexual mores in society during Doloress youth and adulthood. Finally, Dolores came of age before de-institutionalization in the 1980s, and thus spent seven years institutionalized, including several years as an impatient. This would likely not have happened had she been born twenty years later, and had she been born ten years earlier, Dolores may have had an even longer stay under institutional care. Her institutionalization may further hamper her career goals and economic status and could thus have an indirect impact on her general health. AXIS V 51 Two defense mechanisms Dolores uses in the course of her life include undoing — which is so profound the book is even named after it — and humor. Doloress weight gain was essentially an attempt to undo herself as a sexual being. This is clearly a response to the rape, but also has a deeper root; she has had almost no satisfactory physical contact. When she asked her grandmother to hug her, for example, The request seemed to startle her, but she obliged me. Her small body felt stiff and unnatural. . . . I sobbed and shook against her. Her body wouldnt relax. (Lamb 1992, p. 41) Her size undoes her negative thought: that there is something wrong with her as a human being that makes her unlovable. With the extreme weight gain, Dolores gives herself an excuse to be alone — nobody loves her or wants to be close to her because of her physiciality, not because of what she is as a person. Her second major defense mechanism is humor. Indeed, Shes Come Undone is readable despite all the horrible things because Dolores as the narrator is so funny. When remarking on her dubious memory in the early going of the book, she nonetheless insists that the TV delivery men were Richard Nixon and David Eisenhower. Her pursuit of Dante through stolen letters is another example of a behavior that would seem almost frightening had she not put such a light spin on her actions. The text of Shes Come Undone can be seen as an extended use of humor as a defense mechanism, though toward the end she does come to a realization about the centrality of her rape as regards her current plight. From the point of view of Eriksonian development, we can see that Dolores failed at some of the basic crises of development. In her middle childhood, she faced the crisis of industry or inferiority. Her parents, being distant, and TV, being aspirational, instilled within her great feelings of inferiority. As an adolescent, she also experienced role confusion rather than a cemented identity as a young woman. In one telling moment in the book, Dolores begins to menstruate — a classic rite of passage for young girls — and tells her mother, who responds Thats great, Dolores. Thanks a lot. Thats just what I need right now, (Lamb 1992, p. 21). This is a solid attack on Doloress identity as a woman and a sexual being, and obviously a major part of her problems to come. Subsequent to adolescence, Dolores failed other crises points from an Eriksonian perspective. She chose isolation over intimacy with her obesity and her cruel putdown of her female lover, Dottie. Her pursuit of Dante in college involved chicanery, as she intercepted letters from Dante to her college roommate and took the roommates role in Dantes life. Deception is at the heart, then, of her first major consensual romantic and sexual relationship — isolation was chosen over intimacy. Now she faces generativity versus stagnation. One can say that the telling of her story now, at age 40, is generative, but it remains to be seen is Dolores can keep from stagnating. From a Freudian point of view, Dolores has an Electra Complex. She desires her distant and then missing father, and resents her mother for driving him away. As an adult, her obesity is a stand-in for pregnancy — women with the Electra Complex which for their fathers to impregnate them in order to overcome penis envy. Upon marrying, Dolores chooses a man much like her father, and he demands that she has an abortion. Thus, she is robbed of the chance to come to terms with her penis envy, having been denied the penis, ultimately, by her husband, who is a stand-in for her father. The Freudian mode also explains the obesity, her theft of her college roomies letters and then boyfriend, and much of the rest of her life. According to Freud, penis envy leads to an undeveloped superego, where societys rules (such as rules against gluttony, homosexuality, deceit, cruelty, etc. ) are injected into the personality. Doloress hunger for her fathers penis is so profound that she ruins her life in an attempt to finally claim it for her own. Further, in order to attract a man like her father, Dolores became much like her mother Bernice (and grandmother Thelma). She is often distant and sarcastic, belittling of others, and is in poor physical shape due to her overeating and obesity. In these ways, she mimics her mother, who was also in poor health, who distrusted her husband (albeit for good reason) and who responded to Doloress attempt to experience love with sarcasm, alienation, and isolation. The TV was the surrogate for motherhood in Doloress early life. Dolores was treated within a mental hospital, both as an inpatient for years and then as an outpatient. While Dolores did attempt to commit suicide at one point — again mimicking her mother, who died in a freak accident — years of institutionalization did little for her. Ultimately, she was treated during an era where single women were still considered somewhat deviant (despite the social revolution of the womens liberation movement happening concurrently) and thus the institutionalization was thus essentially a form of warehousing. It says more about Doloress intelligence and untapped inner resources that she was able to shift toward outpatient status and then, at age 40, finally get on to the life that had been disrupted years before. A humanistic approach to therapy, along with some behavior modification for her eating disorder, likely would have helped Dolores see the centrality of the rape in her life, and would have better allowed her to acknowledge her victimhood in order to transcend it. Further, psychiatric intervention should have happened earlier in Doloress life, at least as early on as the period immediately after her rape. In that era, however, psychology was still seen as somewhat suspect, and Bernice was simply not interested enough in Dolores to make sure she got the help she needed. Dolores Price, for all her problems and traumas, was an intensely interesting person, full of wit and a drive to overcome her own obstacles. This was an illuminating novel to read because psychological and psychiatric practitioners often only see people at their worst, when they come into the office. Its too easy to conceive of ones clients as just a collection of problems to be worked through. Indeed, the necessary professional detachment of a therapist of any sort virtually guarantees this. Shes Come Undone, despite the titular third-person she, is a first-person narrative. An articulate, somewhat self-aware, and ultimately humorous client who is able to go back over her own life and see the problems, the triumphs, and the mistakes with an unjaundiced eye is a rare thing. Obviously, Dolores and her circumstances are the creation of a master novelist, but nonetheless the novel serves as a reminder that even in therapy, we are often only seeing the tip of an iceberg.