The self is a phenomenon of frame, every frame having an outside and an inside. But the inside of a frame is the outside of a deeper frame and so on. What holds the two sides apart is a fundamental anxiety, a need to assert something against fundamental groundlessness. Erving Goffman eloquentlly describes what happens when the distinction is short-circuited and the current frame suddenly dissolves: "Whether the character that is being presented is sober or carefree, of high station or low, the individual who performs the character will be seen for what he largely is, a solitary player involved in a harried concern for his production. Behind many masks and many characters, each performer tends to wear a single look, a naked unsicialised look, a look of concentration, a look of one who is privately engaged in a difficult, treacherous task."