Dr. Clara Fried

Character Analysis

Dr. Fried is a chubby German immigrant who also happens to be a renowned psychiatrist and therapist.

Right from the get-go, we know that Dr. Fried is compassionate and real with her patients: "She liked working with patients. Their very illness made them examine sanity as few 'sane' people could. Kept them from living, sharing, and simple communication, they often hungered for it with a purity of passion that she saw as beautiful" (2.12).

Sounds like the kind of doctor we'd all like to have, right?

Dr. Fried even remarks that she has much to learn from patients. "Sometimes, she thought ruefully, the world is so much sicker than the inmates of its institutions" (2.13). Basically, we know this lady is going to be a cool combo of honesty and warm fuzzies—and that seems to be exactly what Deborah needs.

Dr. Fried doesn't spend all her time lecturing and teaching a captive audience of students; she's got her patients to deal with. She makes time for Deborah. She longs to save the mentally ill, even if it's a slow and individual process: "If one by one was good enough for God, it would have to do for her" (2.14). Did we mention this doctor is humble, too?

A key detail of Dr. Fried's past is that she worked at a mental institution in Germany while Hitler was in power. The experience made her question the sanity of her entire country; it seemed as if the people in the mental institution were saner than the people outside it. The experience also gives Dr. Fried an exceptionally empathetic quality: she knows how cruel the world can be. She saw it at its absolute cruelest.

Dr. Love

Dr. Fried's goal is to find the health in her patients instead of just defining them by their illnesses. She wants to find her patients' inner strength and draw it out: "The hidden strength is too deep a secret. But in the end…in the end it is our only ally" (2.24). Dr. Fried believes that if she can tap into her patients' dormant strength, she can lead them to mental health by means of it.

This woman has compassion for everyone. After Esther confesses all she did to contribute to Deborah's illness, for example—including letting a governess whip Deborah for wetting her pants when the kid had a tumor in her urethra—Dr. Fried still makes it a point to note that Esther loves Deborah. Instead of judging or reprimanding Esther, here's what she does:

Dr. Fried looked at Esther and listened to the words of love and pain coming from the carefully composed mother of a girl sick to death with deception. The love was real enough and the pain also, so that she said very gently, "Let us, Deborah and I, study for the causes. Do not agonize and blame yourself or your husband or anyone else. She will need your support, not your self-recrimination." (5.58)

Basically, Dr. Fried is giving Esther permission to let go of her anxieties about what she may have done wrong with Deborah. Dr. Fried's message is that the only way out of these troubles is to find strength and move forward. In Esther's case, that means letting go of appearances and just being honest for once. That's the best thing she can do for Deborah.

Never Give Up

Dr. Fried time and again shows her sincere interest in helping Deborah. After she has been moved to D ward for slicing her arm with a tin can, for example, Deborah notes how the doctor doesn't react the way others have reacted to her. Dr. Fried doesn't judge Deborah, and she doesn't stop believing Deborah can get better.

Deborah knows she can trust Dr. Fried with the secrets of Yr: "She was not frightened, Deborah saw, or horrified, or ridiculing, or making any of the hundred wrong expressions that people had always shown in the face of her trouble. She was only completely serious. Deborah began to tell her about Yr" (7.20). This relationship characterized by openness and honesty continues throughout the rest of the novel.

Dr. Fried never gives up on Deborah, even when she disappears into Yr and has meltdown after meltdown. She continues to show her empathy and honesty throughout their therapy sessions, which Deborah appreciates greatly. She doesn't let Deborah off easy; she asks probing questions so often that she earns herself the nicknames "Fore Touch" and "Mental Garbage Collector."

Basically, Dr. Fried understands that Deborah needs some balance. Sometimes Deborah needs some tough love, while at other times, she needs reassurance that she can hold on to Yr until she's ready to let go. That balance ultimately pays off.