Joe Pitts, a brilliant if somewhat obsessive and cynical graduate student from a wealthy dysfunctional family lashes out under pressure against what he sees as the hypocrisy of society and the futility of his life in it. Briefly committed to a psychiatric ward in the aftermath of an altercation with one of his professors, he meets Dr. Margaret Wright, a resident and Susan Holland, a somewhat mystical nursing student. Just as Joe begins to believe that his intellect and his Ego can overcome what he sees as a minor troubling interlude in his life, he receives a shock. It is a diagnosis of...