A patient at Juniper Hill, a mental institution, novelist Virginia Cunningham's only ties to the outside world is through her husband. Virginia's unreliable observations of the patients and staff at Juniper Hill reveal the complexity of her mental state.
Following an emotional collapse a woman is placed in a mental institution by her husband. The severity of her depression causes her sympathetic doctor to try electric shock, hydrotherapy, and drugs, along with psychoanalysis.