Holden Caulfield Psychological Analysis

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Holden Caulfield is seventeen years old and is newly kicked out of his school. In his family, he has two brothers, D.B and Allie who had died prior to the story and a little sister, Phoebe. Along with both his mother and father. Since his mental health was brought up often with thoughts of being crazy, with statements like "I'm crazy, swear to God, I am..." and references of psychological hospitalization in his past, a psychological approach will be used to explain his mannerisms. Holden does demonstrates tendencies associated with Bipolar Disorder, consisting of manic and depressive states. He displays many of the symptoms that follow this disorder such as little need to sleep, difficulty to remain on one single topic for a certain amount of time, and impaired decision making. Bipolar disorder would make more sense on …show more content…

For almost everyone he meets at a bar, he pays for their drinks, sometimes offering drinks for others as well, he donates money to the nun and pays for a prostitute. He has a problem is with decision making, he even makes a plan to become a deaf-mute in order to not to interact with people. He constantly judges people as he generalizes people based on their looks and status everywhere he goes. Everytime he tries to walk across the street and being afraid of disappearing before he makes it or thinking that some pervert bum wrote the obscene words on the wall of the school when it was probably the kids who did it are signs of paranoia. All during the fours days, he only eats breakfast once when he meets the nuns, even then it was very little. At one point Holden has a conversation Ackley, instead of turning out the light like Ackley asks, Holden tries to continue the conversation by asking, “Tell me the story of your fascinating life”. Holden could not sleep at all, going around making plenty of conversations with everybody because he could not

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