Freud, in tracing development through the exposure of crisis, compares the psyche under stress to a crystal that is thrown to the floor and breaks "not into haphazard pieces [but] comes apart along its lines of cleavage into fragments whose boundaries, though they were invisible, were predetermined by the crystal's structure" (1933, p. 59).

(Carol Gilligan "In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development")