When the novel opens, Dick Diver is living in his heyday. He is married to Nicole Diver and has two children, is working on a book that will solidify his reputation as a psychologist, and enjoys wealth enough to travel and vacation on the French Riviera. The first part of the book sees Dick pushed out of his comfort zone: He launches into an affair with a young actress, gets thrown back into the role of therapist toward his wife when she relapses, and must sort out dangerous and unpleasant situations involving the other circle of American expats staying at the hotel. All of this responsibility is put on Dick because he is a respected, scholarly, confident psychiatrist whose ambition and poise fills the descriptive narration about him in the second section of the novel, which flashes back to his post-graduate years. However, the arc of the novel follows the story of Dick’s demise, with the initial promise of a new romance with Rosemary and a new clinical practice with Franz Gregorovius eventually fading into failure in Book 3, leaving Dick disillusioned, discredited, and (ultimately) divorced.

Dick’s central struggle is his relationship with Nicole, which he cannot get beyond thinking of as a “case” (302).