A theme that constantly permeates modern literature is that of human relationships, which is as complex a theme as human nature itself. Nayar tries to trace certain relational patterns in Albee’s selected plays and uses insights borrowed from Marx, Freud, Jung, Fromm, Marcuse, and Buber etc to aid his analysis of Albee’s work. Nayar chooses to describe his empirical reading of Albee’s texts as an exercise in "literary anthropology." In an attempt to evolve a method of classifying relationships, the book provides a general understanding of "how relationships function or operate within American society/culture." The two inter-related categories identified are those of ‘concrete’ and ‘abstract’ relationships. Concrete relationships facilitate familial or social ties, whereas abstract relationships are sought to be defined in terms of spiritual needs of man and can refer to his relationship with God, nature, death, destiny, faith or despair.

Concrete relationships, which form a major part of the discussion, are further classified into five types; namely, circular, dialectical, symptomatic, symbiotic and transformative. While a separate chapter has been devoted to each type of relationship, the theoretical conceptualisation of each model is matched with its practical application in at least two plays of Albee, thereby establishing a co-relation between theory and practice.

A circular relationship is one where a "no-exit-no-growth" situation is created and the two individuals fail to connect both at the verbal as well as the non-verbal levels. In All Over and Counting the Ways, characters interact in this way.

A dialectical relationship operates through tension between individuals. Tension is generated through all kinds of violent means of communication, emotional, physical, psychic or sexual. The dialectical relationship works through a continuous process of contact and withdrawal as in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The American Dream.

A symptomatic relationship, based on the existential view of man, stems from "a compulsive, self-obsessive need of an individual to assert himself." This may lead to either self-destruction or the destruction of the object as in The Zoo Story and Everything in the Garden.

A symbiotic relationship is born of an over-dependence of individuals on one another and may be sadomasochistic in nature. Such a relationship can be seen at work in Tiny Alice and Malcolm.

A transformative relationship, according to Nayar, is the only positive, productive and regenerative relationship. Such a relationship is based on the principle of "freedom together" and manages to balance anti-thetical impulses. This kind of relationship is discussed in Seascape and in the husband-mistress equation in All Over.

A schematic study of relationships such as the present one, the writer admits, may "impose its own set of limitations" not only in terms of categorisation of human relationships into different types but also in the selection and categorisation of Albee’s plays into those models. Treading a safe path, Nayar admits that, "inter-penetration and over-lapping in terms of two apparently dissimilar models can’t be ruled out altogether."

Through a close study of these relational patterns, Nayar tries to reflect Albee’s concern with the American society and culture. By focusing on the micro-levels of human interaction, Albee manages "to capture the otherwise ungraspable, elusive layers of the macro-American reality." Nayar tries to establish Albee as a typical American dramatist whose chief leitmotif is to present how the modern American man has drifted away from his Puritan past. Albee’s emphasis on relationships also suggests that far from being a mere absurdist he is "well entrenched in the much wider European tradition of realistic drama." In fact he attains "a rare synthesis of the two opposing divergent/dramatic traditions, a rare balance between the realistic and the absurdist."