Holden Caulfield: Borderline Personality Disorder

Holden Caulfield is a seventeen-year-old boy from New York born in 1933 who has been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. The patient is the second of four children. His siblings are D.B. Caulfield, his older brother, Allie Caulfield, his younger brother, and Phoebe Caulfield, his younger sister. His father works as a corporate attorney and the family is relatively wealthy. He has recently failed out of Pencey Prep as a junior but has also flunked out of three other well-regarded boarding schools. The only subject in which he is proficient and managed to pass at Pencey is English. Holden has suffered greatly both emotionally and physically after the death of his younger brother, Allie Caulfield, from cancer when Holden

Some of his physical symptoms include several nervous habits, such as turning a faucet on and off and lighting matches, obsessive smoking and drinking, and difficulty breathing after physical activity. The number of cigarettes he smoked in just the few days he was in New York is very alarming. The patient can be observed doing small things such as turning on and off the faucet, along with many other things, on a daily basis. His mental symptoms are extremely prominent and are obvious to anyone who comes in contact with him. He worries about everything he can possibly think of. He will even avoid going to the bathroom because he is “too worried to go” and does not want to “interrupt his worrying” (Salinger, 1951, p. 40). In addition, Holden is a compulsive liar and will tell at least one lie in a typical conversation. He has even stated that he is “the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life” (Salinger, 1951, p. 16). His loneliness and longing for friendship/companionship are alarming as well. When he is with someone, he does not want them to leave for fear of being lonely, as he showed when he begged his friend to stay after meeting him for a drink, ““Have just one more drink,” I told him. “Please. I’m lonesome as hell”” (Salinger, 1951, p. 149). He always mentions how lonely he feels whenever describing a typical day. Holden has even been driven to the idea of

(“Borderline Personality Disorder”, n.d.). BPD is mainly caused by genetic and biological factors, but "loss, neglect and bullying may also contribute" ("Borderline Personality Disorder", 2016). The main cause of Holden's disorder would be the death of his brother, Allie. Also, Holden constantly feels neglected and lonely. People who are diagnosed with BPD usually have impulsive and violent behavior, which Holden demonstrates by breaking windows after Allie dies. “... I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it” (Salinger, 1951, p. 39), he has admitted. They also have unstable moods (“Borderline Personality Disorder”, n.d.). The patient will very often go from being in a pleasant, relatively stable mood, to being angry, sad, or lonely. For instance, when Holden talked to two nuns in Grand Central Station about literature, he was in good spirits, but after they left, he suddenly started thinking about how he did not give them enough money, which ended up making him feel “blue as hell”(Salinger, 1951, p. 113). Holden’s relationships are just as unpredictable as his moods. Any friends he makes usually fade away. He has very few real friends in his life and does not do well with keeping in touch. When he does start to form a relationship, such as with Sally, he usually cannot maintain it. At the end of their date,