Internal intuition
A diary is an exposed point of view, because the diary shows the format of one's thoughts. How does one prioritize the moments in a day? Which kinds of thoughts and experiences actually make it in the diary, and which do not? This aspect of the genre leads to a powerful and accidental imagery where Nin reveals her approach to reality. She exposes her thought life, showing a rich network of emotional associations. She is clearly intuitive, and her intuition is often applied to her experience. It is sometimes as if she is trying to solve a puzzle in her brain that no one else can see.
Masculinity and femininity
The behavior patterns that Nin demonstrates are very similar to the portrait she paints of her father. In fact, when she starts her affair with Henry Miller, she even comments that it is sexually liberating to cheat on her husband, because it is so much more normal for an angry husband to cheat on his wife, and for once, Nin gets to feel like she is sticking it to the man or something. Her femininity is evident in her personality which is intimate and sexual, but her behavior is almost a portrait of the opposite. She is like her father who takes on many, many lovers and never stays to build a family or a home. The reader will see both sides of this age-old dichotomy in Nin's character.
Sexual deviance
To have sex with a lot of people might be psychologically damaging, especially to certain kinds of people, but actually for Anais Nin, the sexual deviance is not just about how many people she sleeps with. She writes erotica frequently, and she demonstrates a full knowledge of the intimacies of sexuality. For instance, she writes that she can sometimes vent negative emotions by having a wild night with a new partner. That would be sex as attempted self-care or therapy. Now, take that kind of lucidity and apply it to the worst of her deviance. What is her experience really like of sleeping with her father over and over again? Incest is also a common element in other books of hers, by the way.
Panic and boredom
Underneath Nin's seemingly vibrant and exciting life there is a subtle imagery at work that the reader can deduce. Why does Nin not like to stay still for very long? Why does she seem to fetishize the extreme? The answer is that she struggles with very intense feelings of anger and hatred (she explains this when she talks about her incestuous romance with her father), and she also struggles with her "nerves." She goes to therapy for this, but to no avail. Through reflection, she admits that she is easily bored, and something about boredom makes her feel extreme, negative emotion.
