In the first part of the paper a criterion is given for two self-adjoint operators T, S in a Hilbert space to have the same essential spectrum, S being given in terms of T and a perturbation P. If P is a symmetric operator and the operator sum T+P is self-adjoint, then S = T+P. Otherwise, T is assumed to be semi-bounded and S is taken to be the form extension of T+P defined in terms of semi-bounded sesquilinear forms. In the case when S = T+P, the result obtained generalises the results of Schechter, and Gustafson and Weidmann for Tm- compact (m> 1) perturbations of T. In the second part of the paper a detailed study is made of the Dirichlet integral
associated with the general second-order (degenerate) elliptic differential expression in a domain Conditions under which t is closed and bounded below are established, the most significant feature of the results being that the restriction of q to suitable subsets of Ω can have large negative singularities on the boundary of Ω and at infinity. Lastly some examples are given to illustrate the abstract theory.