This fall I think you’re riding for – it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn’t supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.
– J. D. Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye. Mr. Antolini in Chapter 24. Mr. Antolini describes Holden as heading for a psychological breakdown, a kind of free fall where he will never reach the bottom. Where he will be disconnected from his environment, having searched for something there that he failed to find, and so ends up giving up.