Danny Saunders’s decision to become a clinical psychologist, breaking from his family’s Hasidic dynasty, reflects a major shift in American culture after World War II. Before the war, psychology was largely an academic field with limited clinical application. However, the vast number of veterans returning with psychological trauma created an urgent, widespread need for mental health services. In response, the US government passed the National Mental Health Act of 1946, which established the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and poured federal funding into psychological research and professional training (EBSCO. “National Institute of Mental Health.” 2026). The Veterans Administration (VA) also created thousands of positions and training opportunities for psychologists to treat former soldiers. This government investment, along with the popularization of psychoanalytic ideas in the 1950s, rapidly transformed clinical psychology into a respected and sought-after profession. The novel uses Danny’s career to explore the tensions between traditional faith-based approaches to suffering and the emerging, secular authority of psychotherapy in post-war American society.

Danny Saunders’s radical therapeutic experiment on Michael is grounded in pioneering sociological and psychological research from the 1940s on the effects of extreme isolation on children. Danny’s method of depriving Michael of nearly all human contact to break through his catatonia reflects the hypotheses explored in real-world cases at the time. The most prominent of these were documented by sociologist Kingsley Davis in two influential papers published in the 1940s in the American Journal of Sociology, both referenced explicitly in The Promise. Comparing the cases of children who had experienced isolation and neglect, Davis developed the theory that early human socialization is essential for cognitive and emotional development, and that a lack of early social interaction could lead to permanent developmental impairment. In The Promise, Danny’s experiment is a high-stakes gamble which extrapolates from this principle: that a state of induced, extreme deprivation can force a psychological breakthrough, making a patient so desperate for contact that they become accessible to therapy.