Anita is a girl of only teenage years, and while she has developed early physically, to a mature woman, she is emotionally struggling. Her relationship with her parents and her friends is very poor and she is regarded with contempt by the people around her, even by the men who so ruthlessly use her. During her troubles she meets Erik, a young psychology student. Gently and carefully he begins to dispel her psychological blocks. In the course of this treatment she reveals to him some of the shocking episodes of her previous experiences. Erik believes he has the solution to Anita's problems: to let her move into an artist's communal experiment, of which he is already a member. The common interest of this collective is largely the performing of classical music. Anita's presence in the collective, however, is regarded by some of the other girls as highly provocative. Anita's nymphomania is her means of protest against her parents, school, society and her own environment (her whole life situation). He therefore tries to get her to see clearly, and with some insight, the breadth of her psychological situation. Against the background of the intensive battle that Anita carries on with the self-destructive drives within her, grows the depth of feeling that bind her and Erik together. She is no longer simply a "case" for him. Anita discovers that Erik is the one man whom she both wants to, and can, remain with.