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The [[thesis]] contains a detailed [[analysis ]] of a [[woman]], named [[Aimée]] after the heroine of one of her unpublished novels, who had attempted to stab a well-known [[Paris]]ian acctress, [[Huguette Duflos]]. The case was widely reported in the press at the [[time]], and [[Lacan]] tried gradually to piece together the [[logic ]] behind her apparently [[irrational ]] [[act]]. His [[thesis]] introduced a new [[concept ]] into the [[psychiatry|psychiatric milieu]], that of "[[self-punishment paranoia]]". [[Lacan]] argued that, in striking the actress, [[Aimée]] was in fact striking herself: [[Duflos]] represented a [[woman]] with [[freedom]] and [[culture|social prestige]], exactly the sort of [[woman]] that [[Aimée]] aspired to become. In her [[ideas]] of [[persecution]], it was this [[figure]] that she saw as the source of [[threats]] to her and her young son. The [[ideal image]] was thus both the [[object]] of her [[hate]] and of her aspiration. [[Lacan]] was especially interested here in this [[complex]] relation to [[image]]s and the ideas of [[identity]] to be found in [[paranoia]]. In her subsequent arrest and confinement, she found the [[punishment]] which was a [[real]] source of the [[act]] itself. She [[understood]], at a certain level, that ''she was herself the [[object]] of [[punishment]]''. [[Lacan]]'s analysis of the [[case]] shows many of the features which would later become central to his [[work]]: [[narcissism]], the [[image]], the [[ideal]], and how the [[personality]] could extend beyond the limits of the [[body]] and be constituted within a [[symbolic|complex social network]]. The actress represented a part of [[Aimée]] herself, indicating how the [[identity]] of a [[human]] [[being]] could include elements well [[outside]] the [[biological]] boundaries of the [[body]]. In a [[sense]], ''[[Aimée]]'s [[identity]] was literally [[outside]] of herself''.