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Features of psychoanalytic theory by sigmund freud
In two pages, review Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory
Features of psychoanalytic theory by sigmund freud
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Depending on how the readers interpret a book, many different analysis can be made. Sigmund Freud’s theory suggest that a person’s unconscious mind can overthrow the person’s usual behavior and make that unconscious mind conscious. Holden Caulfield is portrayed as an adolescent with a crooked view towards the society filled with people who are fake and struggles as he goes through his own conflicts in life as a growing teenager. Many authors unconsciously incorporate their subconscious mind into their works. J.D. Salinger also contributed to the book The Catcher in the Rye subconsciously and one example of it would be the fact that Holden Caulfield was kicked out of his previous school and was forced to enroll in Pencey (Salinger 13). Salinger also “After flunking out of the McBurney School near his home in New York's Upper West …show more content…
Side, he was shipped off by his parents to Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania” (Biography.com). Once the readers examine Holden Caulfield in a psychoanalytical lens, it’ll lend them an insight on why Caulfield acts the way he does and see how Salinger’s life may have made an impact on Holden Caulfield and the general setting of the story. J.D. Salinger was born on January 1, 1919 and passed away January 27, 2010 at the age of 91 due to natural causes. The release of The Catcher in the Rye was a huge hit for the post-World War II America according to Biography.com. Born in New York, he went to McBurney School until he was forced to join the Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania by his parents which many people believe portrays Pencey in the novel. After graduating from the military academy, Salinger went to New York University for a year until he went to Europe with the support of his father who believed that Salinger would not only learn a new language, but also learn about the import business so he can inherit his father’s business. However, Salinger couldn’t care less about learning how to import business and only focused on learning a new language. Once he was back in the states, he went to Ursinus College in Pennsylvania and moved back to New York to take night classes at Columbia University. There he met Professor Whit who pushed him to be a writer. But Salinger’s life did not flow as smoothly as he believed it would as World War II broke out. Salinger was drafted to serve in the military and during his time full of loneliness, he created Holden Caulfield. Biography.com also emphasizes how Salinger suffered greatly from PTSD once he came back and that might the reason why Holden Caulfield has such an extreme personality in the book. Caulfield repeatedly says, “I felt like jumping out the window,” and maybe Salinger unconsciously expresses how he was feeling through Caulfield in order to relieve his pain from PTSD (Salinger 104). When the novel was published in 1951, Salinger received as much attention as his book which he despised. Salinger avoided the attention and secluded himself which can relate to Caulfield because he couldn’t really build a stable relationship with anyone except his younger sister and he was really desperate to find someone to actually connect and relate to. Even though Salinger put himself in an ivory tower, people from his personal life started to expose him. His former lover, Joyce Maynard, wrote about his “controlling and obsessive” trait and even auctioned off a letter he wrote for her for $156,500 (Biography.com). The buyer was a reporter and he returned the letter back to Salinger as a gift later on. His daughter, Margaret, also wrote a book on negative accounts of her father. This information also tells the readers that Salinger may not be the man that everyone thinks he is. Salinger may be trying to suppress his aggressive behaviors by relieving it through Holden Caulfield. Despite his “potentially aggressive” behaviors, Salinger continued to live his life and married a woman named Colleen O’Neil, who was a nurse and stayed with her until his death at his house in Cornish. Salinger met a lot of women before he passed away and in the book, Holden is a boy who talks big, but is still sort of a wimp when it comes to women and intimacy. Sigmund Freud, born on May 6, 1856, is a neurologist who “developed psychoanalysis, a method through which an analyst unpacks unconscious conflicts based on the free associations, dreams and fantasies of the patient” (Biography.com). To put it simply, Freud came up with the idea that claims that people’s unconscious minds are expressed through other certain behaviors subconsciously. According to Freud, a personality has 3 main “mental entities called id, ego, and superego” (Nevid 470). The id tries to fulfill the basic “animal drives and instinctual impulses” and demand “instant gratification without regard to social rules or customs” (Nevid 470). However, it is held back through the existence of a person’s ego. The ego handles the “delays of gratification” and it follows the reality principle where it takes into account whether something is reasonable and acceptable (Nevid 470). Even if the id runs rampage, the ego is what will keep it under control. Ego tries to satisfy the needs of the id without disrupting the norm. “The superego, in addition to that, is our internal moral guardian and conscience”(Nevid 470). Superego functions mostly in the unconscious, determining whether a certain action was morally right or wrong. That is why Nevid says the ego stands in between the id and the superego. Ego balances the animalistic desires of the id and the moral values of the superego and find a compromising point for both of them to be satisfied. Holden Caulfield’s mental entities can be found rather easily in the novel as well once the book is read in a psychoanalytical lens. The Catcher in the Rye is a book that hit the hearts of both adolescents and adults.
Holden Caulfield, a young boy in his teenage years who lives without his parents alone in a dorming school without any real friends must figure out how he can survive through a world full of “phonies” when he himself has become tainted as well. “A combination of strong vocabulary and the creation of a strong-acid-behavior character was the best formula for a legend to be born: Holden Caulfield became the “older brother” for many adolescents who did not have anyone to turn to, a kind of partner, fellow friend. Caulfield and his existentialistic problems showed the whole world how tough and tiring being a teenager could be” (Pinto 7). Although there are many parts in the book that might make Caulfield seem disapproving such as, “I’M THE MOST terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful,” or “I kept walking around the room, waiting for this prostitute to show up. I kept hoping she’d be good-looking. I didn’t care too much, though. I sort of just wanted to get it over with,” it is important to know why Caulfield acted the way he did (Salinger 16 and
93). To start off, Holden Caulfield is still a virgin. He never had the guts to actually move on to the next level with a girl even though he talks very big. Caulfield says, “The thing is, most of the time when you’re coming pretty close to doing it with a girl-a girl that isn’t a prostitute or anything, I mean-she keeps telling you to stop. The trouble with me is, I stop. Most guys don’t. But I can’t help it” (Salinger 92). Salinger thinks that he wants to do it, he wants to lose his virginity like some of the other guys such as Stradlater, but he knows that it is not the right thing to do. Like Helena Leite Pinto says, “When it comes to dealing with girls and sex, Holden shows he has principles, even though he seems to be a little confused and unsettled person, he is a boy who respects girls and does not allow his id to prevail” (14). Caulfield does not let his libido overthrow his conscious and that shows how strong he is. He is a teenage boy with an overdose of testosterone and the fact that he is able to control himself shows the readers that he is different from other boys.
In the novel, Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield is an example of a prosaic rich adolescent boy,with a pedestrian set of problems, but a psychoanalysis reveals that Holden has a plethora of atypical internal conflicts. Internal conflicts that other students at Pencey, such as Stradlater and Ackley, would not normally experience.
Holden Caulfield, portrayed in the J.D. Salinger novel Catcher in the Rye as an adolescent struggling to find his own identity, possesses many characteristics that easily link him to the typical teenager living today. The fact that the book was written many years ago clearly exemplifies the timeless nature of this work. Holden's actions are those that any teenager can clearly relate with. The desire for independence, the sexually related encounters, and the questioning of ones religion are issues that almost all teens have had or will have to deal with in their adolescent years. The novel and its main character's experiences can easily be related to and will forever link Holden with every member of society, because everyone in the world was or will be a teen sometime in their life.
Holden Caulfield is a sixteen-year-old who explores New York City after he is expelled from his prep school (Salinger). He cannot return back home because he is afraid of his parents’ response and takes no responsibility for his actions whatsoever. Holden hates the adult world, where he calls all adults “phonies.” In his world, one can’t go back to childhood, but one can’t grow up because that will make one a phony (Bloom, The Catcher in the Rye 124). Holden is stuck in between a world, where he doesn’t want to remain a child or grow up into the adult he is expected to become. According to Chen, Holden fears the “complexity, unpredictability, conflict, and change” of the adult world. He occasionally acts like an adult, when he hires a prostitute (Salinger 119), checks into a hotel room (Salinger 79), and takes care of his sister, Phoebe. As a result of Holden’s immense fear of growing up, he tends to partake in childish tendencies, such as wearing a bright red hunting hat. These actions are his way of isolating and protecting himself. Holden is stuck in his own little world. These actions are very immature; Holden does not accept the adult world for what it is. He needs human contact, care, and love, but he has built a barrier, preventing himself from these interactions (Chen). He also acts like a child by acting out “pretend” scenarios even when no one is
Thesis: Holden Caufield is a hostile, negatively charged character that suffers from depression which stems from a desire not to grow up and a lack of closure in his brothers death."If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like . . . "(pg. 1) These first words that Holden Caufield communicates during his tell of events that brought him to his breakdown, show the pent up hostility that still lingers. This pattern of speech, the constant expression of negativity, is a character trait of Holden that shows his inner anguish.
Untitled “BPD has a higher incidence of occurrence than schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and is present in approximately 2% of the general public” (Johnston).Borderline Personality Disorder, or BPD, is an emotional disorder that creates unstable behavior and stress in an individual. Holden Caulfield, J.D. Salinger’s, 1948 novel, The Catcher in the Rye, has been praised by many readers. Psychoanalysis is insightfully looking at a character's actions and behavior to better understand them psychologically. By psychoanalyzing Holden Caulfield’s behavior and thoughts, it becomes evident that he has Borderline Personality Disorder, caused by his childhood trauma and neglect, and portrayed through symptoms that damage his relationships and himself. Holden’s Borderline Personality Disorder is caused by trauma and neglect during his childhood, and separation from family, all mostly circulating around the death of his younger brother, Allie (“Mayo Clinic”).
In J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is seen by some critics a a drop out student destined for failure in life, but I see him as a symbol of an adolescent who struggles to adapt to the reality of adulthood.
Holden and the Complexity of Adult Life What was wrong with Holden, the main character in The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D.Salinger, was his moral revulsion against anything that was ugly, evil, cruel, or what he called "phoney" and his acute responsiveness to beauty and innocence, especially the innocence of the very young, in whom he saw reflected his own lost childhood. There is something wrong or lacking in the novels of despair and frustration of many writers. The sour note of bitterness and the recurring theme of sadism have become almost a convention, never thoroughly explained by the author's dependence on a psychoanalytical interpretation of a major character. The boys who are spoiled or turned into budding homosexuals by their mothers and a loveless home life are as familiar to us today as stalwart and dependable young heroes such as John Wayne were to an earlier generation. We have accepted this interpretation of the restlessness and bewilderment of our young men and boys because no one has anything better to offer.
This is the first psychiatric hospital admission for the patient, a 17 year-old male. The subject freely admitted himself to care at 13:00 hours on November 28, 1958. Mr. Holden Caulfield arrived at the hospital in the company of his parents--whose consent was necessary given Holden's legal status as a minor--and his younger sister Phoebe. His induction took place without any incident.
Holden Caulfield, - notorious for either being kicked out of schools or as he simply describes it “quitting”- having just been kicked out of yet another school for his lack of motivation, views life through a cynical lens as he deems those different from him as “phony”. Holden justifies his annoyance towards everything as he intermittently cuts off his tale to share some random pet peeve or irrelevant story, such as when he describes his roommate Stradlater as a “secret slob” (Salinger, 35) and continues on to critique his grooming habits, in an effort to validate how “phony” things really are. However, these tactics only further show his immaturity as Holden’s judgment of being a “phony” symbolizes his fear of growing up. Moreover, Holden’s greatest defense mechanism is pushing others away, this is seen as Holden visits his history teacher, Mr. Spencer and while he tries to
Psychoanalysis is a psychoanalytical theory and therapy that aims to treat mental disorders by investigating the conscious and unconscious elements in a human mind by bringing fears to the conscious mind. According to Sigmund Freud, “The unconscious silently directs the thoughts and behavior of the individual” (Freud 95). Holden Caulfield, the main character in J.D Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye, is sixteen years old and does not act his own age for he is stuck in his own private world, filled with pain and suffering. In the novel, Holden can be observed through a psychoanalytical view, which provides the reader a clear understanding of his unconscious mind. Holden is displayed as a troubled and foolish teenager who is flunking from another private school for boys. This in the story is ironic for, Holden states, “’That sonuvabitch Hartzell thinks you’re a hot-shot in English, and he knows you’re my rommmate” (Salinger 28). Teacher’s think that Holden is good in school, but his mental issue affects him academically and in addition to his inability to deal with life. Salinger begins his novel with Holden explicitly stating, “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like…” (Salinger 1). Seeing Holden through a psychoanalytical point we can assume that his lousy childhood can be the cause of his feeling of being lost, repression, and his unstable emotions if depression and isolation. According to another psychologist that agrees to Freudian theory, Lacan states, “Human behavior is often something of puzzle, requiring concerted acts of investigation to discover root causes and multiple effects” (Hall 105).
Psychological Problems in Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye Jerome David Salinger was a very famous American author who wrote several books. One of his most successful books was The Catcher in the Rye. Other works by Salinger include the short story collection Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey, and Raise High The Beam, Carpenter and Seymour. In the book The Catcher in the Rye Holden Caulfield, became a model of the rebellious and confused adolescent who detected the “phoniness” of the adult world. (Microsoft Encyclopedia 98). This showed that he had a serious psychological problem. He never wanted to grow up and, he also never wanted his sister to face the world. He thought that the world was too bad for her to go out to because of the problems he faced in his own life. Psychology of a person determines that person’s personality. This research paper will attempt to tell why Holden suffered from psychological problems.
J.D. Salinger presents Holden Caulfield as a confused and distressed adolescent. Holden is a normal teenager who needs to find a sense of belonging. All though Holden’s obsession with “phonies” overpowers him. Dan Wakefield comments, “The things that Holden finds so deeply repulsive are things he calls “phony”- and the “phoniness” in every instance is the absence of love, and , often the substitution of pretense for love.” Holden was expelled from Pencey Prep School not because he is stupid, but because he just is not interested. His attitude toward Pencey is everyone there is a phony. Pencey makes Holden feel lonely and isolated because he had very few friends. Holden’s feeling of alienation is seen when he doesn’t attend the biggest football game of the year. His comments on the game: “It was the last game of the year and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn’t win” (2, Ch. 1). This also hints to Holden’s obsession with death. Holden can’t find a since of belonging in the school because of all the so-called phonies. Holden speaks of Pencey’s headmaster as being a phony. Holden says that on visitation day the headmaster will pay no attention to the corny-looking parents. Holden portrays his not being interested by saying, “all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to buy a goddam Cadillac someday, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses”(131, Ch. 17). Holden does not care for school or money. He just wants everyone to be sincere and honest.
Upon introduction, Holden Caulfield gives the impression of being a textbook teenage boy. He argues that Pencey Prep, the all-boys academy at which he studied, is no greater than any other school and is “full of crooks.”(Salinger, 7) His harsh language only further argues that he is situated in an all-male environment and has no apparent filter for when swearing is inappropriate. Despite all of the indications that Holden is typical, it soon becomes evident that Holden’s personality does not conform to the teenage stereotype. Although he appears to have some friends, namely, his roommate, Stradlater, and ‘Ackley kid’, it is clear that he does not integrate well with his peer group. Holden’s inability to read social cues leaves him in the dust when all of his “friends” have matured enough to recognize his need for improvement. He is constantly making jokes out of everything without any thought as to how h...
In the novel The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger develops Holden Caulfield as a morally ambiguous character. Throughout the book, Salinger speaks as Holden and introduces him as a callous and subjective individual. However, the author permits the reader to be within Holden’s mind, giving the audience an alternative perspective of Holden’s true character. Without the obscurity of Holden’s personality, the work would lack a crucial element. As the protagonist, Holden serves as an equivocal adolescent that is relatable for the reader.
J.D. Salinger, the author of The Catcher in the Rye, uses the behaviour of protagonist Holden Caulfield to shape his personality in the way he alienates himself from the rest of the world. Holden alienates himself from the society he lives in, his relationships with others and also the relationships he has with himself. Holden struggles to cope with the fact that eventually he will have to grow up, and so will everyone around him. Holden see’s the world not being perfect as a huge problem that he alone has to fix because everyone else is too much of a ‘phony’ to do it. The novel explores Holden’s weekend after he got kicked out of his fourth school, Pency Prep, and the struggles he faces with alienating himself.