Footfalls above "we would see the tracing on the stage floor of a tremendously elongated variation of the figures 8 turned on its side … the mathematical symbol for infinity." Beckett was also indebted to the French psychologist Pierre Janet for his conception of hysterical behaviour. In his overview of Janet's work, Robert Woodworth in his "Contemporary Schools of Psychology", a work Beckett read, pays particular attention to Janet's description of the "hysterical paralysis of one arm", which Beckett incorporated, into May's posture. There are a number of analogies between "Footfalls" and Janet's work with a patient called Irène: He lists
Degree symbol Degree symbol The degree symbol (°) is a typographical symbol that is used, among other things, to represent degrees of arc (e.g. in geographic coordinate systems), hours (in the medical field), degrees of temperature, alcohol proof, or diminished quality in musical harmony. The symbol consists of a small raised circle, historically a zero glyph. In Unicode it is encoded at . The first known recorded modern use of the degree symbol in mathematics is from 1657 where the usage seems to show that the symbol is a small raised zero, to match the prime symbol notation of sexagesimal subdivisions of