The purpose of this paper is to discuss the fluidity of symptoms that a group of psychiatric patients presents during the passage of time. Although clinically recognizable and worthy of attention, this fluctuation makes the illness difficult to conceptualize under a definitive diagnostic category. Such a dilemma is very familiar to the hospital psychiatrist. The authors present a case to illustrate the fluidity of symptoms manifested by a patient throughout the course of her illness. Awareness of the changing clinical presentations may alert us both to reformulate the patient on an ongoing basis, and to identify the different intervention needs at various points in time.
