"We all of us fancy that we must have a core at the center, something that is not merely shell. We would like to hold within us some specially dainty kernel, to be a nut protecting the future, the everlasting. And we do not realise, cannot realise, that we have in fact no kernel, but are made up of one leaf on top of another from outermost to innermost, that in fact, we are onions. But in the onion every leaf shares its essential nature. The onion is honest right through, and only becomes dishonest, rotten, if it tries to grow a kernel different from the rest of it, and to destroy the peel as though it were something false, something no honourable onion should acknowledge. Everything in us is a peeling, but in every peeling is the essential nature of the whole. The self is an onion self."
(Georg Groddeck - Exploring the Unconscious)