Detailed catalogues purported to offer more or less exhaustive classifications of the forms of false evaluations which give rise to morally wrong behaviour. They could be used in moral teaching as indices of vicious acts and as diagnoses for the therapy of emotions. (See section 1.7 below.) The purpose of the therapy was to extirpate emotions which the Stoics regarded as the main source of existential and social trouble. The Stoic ideal self is self-sufficient, integral, and constant. Exter- nal things merely graze the surface of the skin of the wise man, who retreats into himself and lives with himself (Seneca, Epistles 9.17; 72.4– 5). 162 Openness to emotional responses with respect to particular things would destroy the autarchy of the perfect life and make it fragmented and uncontrolled (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.61).