Set within the highly charged confines of individual psychotherapy sessions, the series once again centers around Dr. Paul Weston, who recently divorced his wife Kate and moved from Maryland to a brownstone in Brooklyn, New York. Rebuilding his practice while wrestling with some of the demons he left behind, including a lawsuit filed by the father of Alex, a patient who died last year, Paul takes on several new patients.

Paul is a therapist who exhibits great insight and confidence when treating his patients. But Paul suffers crippling insecurities and is counseled by his own therapist, Gina. Adding to his list of growing concerns, his wife Kate is overcome with feelings of neglect and resents competing for his attention. Paul's patients include a young doctor who is in love with Paul; a Navy pilot who is reevaluating his life after a failed mission in Iraq; a teenage...

"Despair is always described as dull, " writes Daphne Merkin, "when the truth is that despair has a light all its own, a lunar glow, the color of mottled silver." This Close to Happy--Merkin's rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression--captures this strange light. Daphne Merkin has been hospitalized three times: first, in grade school, for childhood depression; years later, after her daughter was born,...