The therapy of a thirty-five year old college professor "Tom" who had spent most of his life taking refuge in the comfortable half-world of neurosis. Divorced, with two children, he is from a small Ohio town, often called the All-American City. Fittingly enough, dissecting him is very much like dissecting America. If there was a typical American, He would be it; loyal, church going, industrious, tense, and dead. He wasn't getting much out of life; it all seemed so empty and without meaning.
Most of the film concerns the three weeks of his daily sessions in Primal Therapy. The film also follows his return home to Ohio and his encounter with his parents after much of his therapy had been completed.