I was reading Kato's book on Perturbations of Linear Operators and have the following questions: 1. If we have a self-adjoint operator, what kinds of perturbations (other than relatively bounded ones) will result in self-adjoint operators? 2. If we have a negative-semidefinite operator, what kinds of perturbations will result in self-adjoint operators? I realize my question is kind of vague. I do not have a specific aim in mind, I am just trying to gain a better understanding of what perturbations can do to unbounded operators. Thanks in advance.