Notes to John

Notes to John is a posthumous collection of American author Joan Didion’s diary entries. Originally published in 2025 by Alfred A. Knopf, the text compiles a series of Didion’s private reflections on her therapy sessions with psychiatrist Dr. Roger MacKinnon. Didion worked with MacKinnon from 1999-2012, but her recorded entries on their sessions only span from late 1999 to early 2002. Didion addressed all of her entries to her husband John Gregory Dunne, conveying her desire to include him in her therapeutic work. The ethics of publicizing Didion’s personal diaries have been much debated since the text’s publication. The unedited letters explore themes including Navigating Mother-Daughter Relationships, Writing As a Means of Survival, and Confronting Mental Health in a Therapeutic Setting. 

This guide refers to the 2025 Alfred A. Knopf hardback edition of the text.

Joan Didion is a literary icon best known for her nonfiction titles The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights, as well as her novel Play It as It Lays.

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide include discussion of suicidal ideation, death by suicide, depression, anxiety, addiction, substance use, chronic illness, and death.

Summary

In the text’s introduction, the editors of Notes to John explain the origin of Didion’s enclosed diary entries. After her death in 2021, Didion’s heirs discovered a series of personal writings in Didion’s home office. These writings included her notes on her therapy sessions with Dr. Roger MacKinnon. The heirs have since given the letters to the New York Public Library, where they’re open to the public as a part of the Didion/Dunne archive. Didion began working with Dr. MacKinnon at her adopted daughter Quintana’s urging in 1999. Quintana struggled with alcoholism, depression, and anxiety, and worked with her own psychiatrist Dr. Kass. Dr. Kass connected Didion with Dr. MacKinnon in hopes that his colleague might help Didion navigate her relationship with Quintana just as Dr. Kass helped Quintana navigate her relationship with Didion.

The text is organized into a series of diary entries—each marked with a timestamp. Because the entries use both the past and present tenses, this summary reflects these same tense shifts.

In 1999, Didion begins working with Dr. MacKinnon and writing about her sessions. She addresses the notes to her husband John Gregory Dunne to keep him apprised of her therapeutic work. Didion and Dr. MacKinnon focus on Didion’s relationship with Quintana. Didion and John adopted her when she was an infant in 1966, but Didion admits that she’s lived with a constant fear of losing Quintana. When Quintana was a child, Dr. MacKinnon guesses, this fear had to do with the adoption itself. In the present, he theorizes this fear relates to Quintana’s mental health. Didion agrees that Quintana’s recurring suicidal ideations and acute reliance on alcohol worry her.

Throughout the following months, Didion and Dr. MacKinnon delve further into Didion’s reasons for relating to Quintana the way she does. Dr. MacKinnon encourages Didion to examine the difference between protecting Quintana as a child and loving Quintana as an autonomous adult. He reminds her that loving Quintana doesn’t always need to mean worrying about her. He also encourages Didion to confront her childhood and her relationships with her parents. He thinks that her past might offer her insight into her present—particularly into how she understands herself as a mother. In one session, Didion admits that she has had a long-time fear of revisiting her childhood. Years prior, she got an idea for a book about California which excited her. However, the project required her to revisit her family history, and she abandoned the book because she felt incapable of confronting her childhood.

Over time, Didion starts to open up to Dr. MacKinnon about her childhood. She talks about moving back and forth across the country when her father was in the military during World War II. The family’s frequent travels made Didion feel like an outsider. She also discovers that because her mother didn’t take care of the house, she felt responsible for cleaning and maintaining order. Her mother would chastise her for her obsession with tidiness and scheduling, which has continued to affect Didion throughout her adulthood. She eventually realizes that much of her anxiety originates from her desire for and fear of losing control. With Dr. MacKinnon’s guidance, she recognizes that her controlling tendencies impact her and Quintana’s relationship.

Quintana’s mental health vacillates throughout Didion’s early days with Dr. MacKinnon. At times, Didion feels that Quintana is more open and communicative. At other times, Quintana will start drinking again and her moods will shift. Didion tells Dr. MacKinnon that she wishes Quintana could use her work as a photographer to bolster her spirits and give her life meaning. This is how Didion has always regarded her writing—as a survival mechanism. Dr. MacKinnon acknowledges how important writing has been to Didion’s mental health, and encourages her to share her insecurities, challenges, and risks with Quintana. He implies that if Didion lets Quintana see her vulnerabilities, Quintana might be more open, too.

Didion made strides throughout the recorded sessions with Dr. MacKinnon. However, she abruptly stopped taking notes on their sessions in January 2002. This entry is followed by one disjointed entry Didion wrote about a therapy session in January 2003—a file that was found on her computer rather than amongst her handwritten notes. The entries preceding this closing entry are also spotty and detail a session only every few months.

In the afterword, the editors describe the events that followed Quintana’s wedding in 2003. After being hospitalized for the flu, she suffered a series of medical complications. John died later that year. Two years later, Quintana was still suffering from an array of illnesses. She died in August of 2005. After her death, Didion reflected on her daughter’s fate in another private journal entry and personal email. She would go on to publish Blue Nights in 2011, detailing Quintana’s life, their relationship, and her death.