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At
a private psychiatric clinic, Dr. Stewart McIver meets with a troubled young
patient, Steven W. Holte, while Victoria Inch, the clinic's brisk
administrator, orders new drapes for the institution's library.
Stewart's wife Karen drops by and interrupts the session, and Steven becomes
agitated at the sight of her.
That evening, the McIvers quarrel bitterly and,
after Karen accuses Stewart of neglecting her, he cancels their date for a
concert and returns to the clinic for a meeting with the patients'
committee. Stewart, who is trying to introduce a system of
self-government among the institution's residents, listens as the patients
propose designing and making the new drapes for the library themselves.
Meanwhile, at the concert's intermission, Karen
gets a call from her friend, influential clinic board member Regina
Mitchell-Smythe, who will be coming to town the following week and proposes
to handle the redecoration of the library herself. Delighted, Karen
calls Victoria with the news, but the officious Victoria bristles at the
interference and decides to complete the project herself. Karen then
encounters medical director Douglas N. Devanal in the lobby and complains
about Victoria's rudeness. Devanal appears sympathetic but is clearly
interested in Karen, and asks her to meet him for cocktails the following
day.
In the morning, Steven speaks with Meg Faverson
Rinehart, the clinic's new crafts director, who tells him that therapy
helped her after her husband and son were killed in an accident four years
earlier. Steven, a talented artist, creates designs to be used on the
new curtains, and Meg and Stewart are impressed with his work.
Meanwhile, Karen meets Devanal for cocktails,
and vents her frustration over her relationship with Stewart. After
work, Stewart stops by Meg's apartment to discuss the situation with
Victoria and the curtains, then goes to Victoria's house and sternly
reprimands her for standing in the way of the patients' project. Karen
returns home late that evening and tells Stewart that she has straightened
out the matter of the drapes with Devanal. Stewart angrily warns her
that Devanal is a known womanizer and, after another bitter fight, the
couple again retire to different rooms to sleep.
The
following day, Victoria confronts Devanal and demands to know if Stewart is
really in charge of the clinic, as he told her the previous evening.
Devanal, whose career is in a decline, confesses it is true, adding that he
has even kept the transfer of power a secret from his wife. Shaken by
the encounter with Victoria, Devanal begins to drink, and dictates a memo
ordering that the patients' drapery project be cancelled. After going
to the McIvers' home and making a futile pass at Karen, Devanal goes to a
hotel room to get drunk.
Meanwhile, Steven learns about the memo and
flies into a rage, and Stewart angrily revokes Devanal's orders.
Devanal calls Victoria and instructs her to prepare a negative report on
Stewart that can be used to ambush him at the upcoming board meeting.
Stewart visits Meg in the art studio and, after speaking wistfully of the
early years of his marriage, says he is going to have to fight Devanal for
control of the clinic. Meg invites him to her apartment for a drink,
and they fall into an embrace. When Karen later calls the clinic and
learns that Stewart is with Meg, she goes to the clinic library and hangs
the drapes Regina sent her.
In the morning, Stewart learns that Steven
reacted badly when he saw the new drapes, smashing up the art studio and
running away. A mood of unrest spreads among the patients, and Stewart
is ripping down the drapes when Regina enters with Devanal. Stewart
warns Devanal that he will hold him responsible if Steven commits suicide,
then returns to his office to find Devanal's wife Edna waiting for him.
Edna produces a damning report that details Devanal's professional
shortcomings and marital indiscretions, and begs Stewart not to use it
against her husband. Stewart examines the report and sees that it was
written by Victoria. Stewart then goes to the river, where the police
are searching for any sign of Steven. Meg joins him and, after sadly
admitting that she was unintentionally using Stewart and Steven to replace
her lost family, tells him their affair must end.
Later, before the board meeting, Stewart speaks
with Victoria, and at his urging, she does not present the report on Devanal.
Stewart tells the board that he plans to continue the self-government
program, adding that he now sees that an analyst's effectiveness is related
to the way he lives his own life. After Stewart leaves, Devanal hands
Regina his letter of resignation. Stewart and Karen go for a drive and
talk out their problems, and when they return home, find a bedraggled Steven
waiting for them. Stewart and Karen take the exhausted young man into
their home and put him to bed on the couch, using one of Regina's drapes as
a blanket. |
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