In the author's reading, Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (1934) is a sustained investigation of the incest taboo and of the psychological pressures that can lead to its collapse in the clinical situation. This novel allows the reader privileged entry into the “case” of a clinical boundary violation in a way that no scientific paper can permit. Drawing on Chasseguet-Smirgel's (1976) concept of the illness of ideality, the author uses this novel to demonstrate why none of us is safe from the possibility of erotic involvement with a patient.