Styron compares himself to Emma of the novel Madame Bovary. Before Emma commits suicide, she goes to see a priest. However, “the priest, a simple soul and none too bright, can only pluck at his stained cassock, distractedly shout at his acolytes, and offer Christian platitudes” (51), and Emma is not saved. Similarly, when Styron went to see a psychiatrist after returning from Paris, he had very little faith that therapy could help him. Although Styron believes that therapy probably helps people who are in the early stages of depression, but he also believes that the real value in seeing his new doctor, whom he calls “Dr. Gold,” is about gaining access to medication.

At his first appointment, Styron admitted having suicidal urges, but he did not tell the doctor that he had started thinking in specifics; noticing, for instance, that certain trees or beams at home would serve for hanging himself, or that the bathtub would be an ideal place to cut his wrists. He had even started fantasizing about ways that he might die that might seem unintentional, thereby avoiding stigma, such as making himself ill, inducing a heart attack, or staging an accident. While the healthy mind might find these thoughts horrifying, they “are to the deeply depressed mind what lascivious daydreams are to persons of robust sexuality” (53).