Jake Singer is an anxious young schoolteacher living in New York. He is barely on speaking terms with his father, recently abandoned by his girlfriend, and heading for a life of compromise and mediocrity at a prestigious uptown prep school.
Emotionally paralyzed, Jake embarks on a course of psychoanalysis with the maniacal Argentine-Freudian Dr. Ernesto Morales, therapist from hell, who wields his heavily accented sarcasm like a machete. Morales's tactics are worthy of the Spanish Inquisition, and soon Jake is just trying to keep him at a distance while planning his escape.
But when he meets socialite widow Allegra Marshall, Jake finds himself upwardly mobile in the Manhattan of serious money and glamour. Bouncing from Morales s couch to Allegra's bed and back again, Jake s whole life begins taking on the strange, unpredictable quality of a therapy session.
The Treatment captures all of the wit and mystery of Jake Singer s epic journey through the realms of psychoanalysis and mature love.