Denial

In his youth Joseph Voke developed severe tension headaches whenever he involved himself with a female. He diagnosed the problem: repressed anger and resentment. And he employed a solution: recognize the anger/resentment when it happens, accept it for what it is, and then let the other people involved know about it. It worked: it cleared up his headaches. So at age 25 he vowed to employ this same method to his shyness toward people for whom he felt affection. Unfortunately for Joseph Voke, this included women. This is the story of struggling college instructor who let himself feel affection for three women other than his wife. Though he had not lost affection for his wife, nor had he any intention of replacing her with any of these other women, he nevertheless could not deny his affection for them. The novel chronicles the events that lead Joseph Voke, a personally very honest though professionally relatively unsuccessful man, to near psychological destruction as his affections for three women set off a string of events that splits his universe in half: one half aligning with his wife, her family and friends, and the medical profession; the other half aligning with his own view of himself. His self image of man wishing to overcome his shyness and deal honestly with his feelings is severely challenged by his wife's view of him as a man with a chemical imbalance and by the psychological profession's view of him as a man suffering from a psychological disorder. Throughout the book Voke analyzes himself and his situation through his interaction with St. Augustine, representing a Christian response to his behavior, Charles Darwin, representing an evolutionary explanation, Sigmund Freud, representing the psychological side, and finally Socrates, representing his philosophical self and his place in society. These characters aid him in his self-analysis and provide the reader with a good deal of comic relief as Joseph Voke's personality comes undone. This novel tragically and satirically shows how men and women have collaborated to create systems of mass delusion, how fear distorts perception to the point of denial and divorce or, depending upon one's interpretation of the novel, how guilt distorts self-perception to the point of denial of one's true nature.