In a good work, characters are depicted so accurately that they seem real. At the author's behest, they face challenges, face moral choices, and risk their health and even their lives.

What if literary heroes, past and present, who suffered tragic setbacks, had sought therapy in time? Would parenting counseling have saved Oedipus Rex's parents from disaster? Would Romeo and Juliet's story have unfolded differently if they had been older? Perhaps Dracula was misunderstood, and Voldemort was unloved as a child? Do Christian Grey's erotic fantasies from Fifty Shades of Grey indicate a lack of masculinity?

The book's authors, a literary scholar and a psychiatrist, subjected some famous characters from fiction to psychological analysis to understand what explains their failures, which quirks and problems are universal, and which are determined by the era.