If you feel something I do not feel, then we become separated. If you feel something which the group you associate yourself with does not feel, then you become alienated. In the first instance, you may dismiss the problem of separation because we are equals, and you are as good as I am. In the second instance, the matter is not to be dismissed so lightly, since one is not equal to a group. Here you become an alien, you move yourself to another country of the mind and take up citizenship there, like Ruth among the alien corn. Of course, the movement may be partly voluntary, partly compulsory; it is frequently difficult to distinguish where exile begins and expatriation leaves off. Here you must question whether the unifying standards of the group are true and acceptable. If you reject them, then you are declaring that you are superior to the group-and, for the social animal that man is, such a step is daring in the extreme. Hence you must be prepared to assert new standards, and to defend them, either by developing a rationale-the beginning of philosophy-or else merely to assert that the individual will is the only standard.

-James A. Arieti, "Achilles' Guilt"