The Psychological Structure of The Catcher in the Rye

James Bryan
As a step toward psychological understanding, I shall consider certain manifestations of Holdens
disturbances. An examination of the structure, scene construction and suggestive imagery reveals a
pattern of aggression and regression, largely sexual, which is suggested in the Pencey Prep section, acted
out in the central part of the novel and brought to a curious climax in the Phoebe chapters.
Era when Sigmund Freuds theories and works were popular in American society, James
Bryan attempts to use such psychoanalysis to critic and understand Salingers Catcher in the Rye.
Psychoanalysis is a comprehensive theory about human nature, motivation, behavior,
development and experience as well as a method of treatment for psychological problems and
difficulties in living a successful life. It opened up a new view on mental illness suggesting that
talking about probs with a professional could help relieve symptoms of psychological distress
which we see Holden being drawn into for treatment. The psychoanalytic framework stresses the
importance of understanding: that each individual is unique, that there are factors outside of a
person's awareness consisting of unconscious thoughts, feelings and experiences which influence
his or her thoughts and actions, that the past shapes the present, and that human beings are
always engaged in the process of development throughout their lives.
Bryan chooses to explore Freuds particular psychosexual development theory with
reference to Holden. Freud believed that personality develops through a series of childhood
stages during which the pleasure-seeking energies become focused on certain erogenous areas.
He labeled this psychosexual energy as the driving force behind behavior. If these psychosexual
stages are completed successfully, the result is a healthy personality. If certain issues are not
resolved at the appropriate stage, fixation can occur. A fixation is a persistent focus on an earlier
psychosexual stage. Until this conflict is resolved, the individual will remain "stuck" in this
stage. Im guessing you can already start to see where this definition may apply to Holden.
Bryan begins his essay with a passage from the start of the book contrasting Holdens
views of a school football game with a game of catch he and a couple acquaintances had
previously held. The comparison blatantly points out Holdens position between a world he cant
return to and a world he fears to enter (football being a civilized ritualization of adult human
aggression and catch being a nice adolescent game of sharing rather than fighting). It is a prelude
to the looming and unavoidable approaching crisis of Holdens transition from childhood into
adulthood, further symbolized by the friends names from the game of catch ticking and bell.
The idyll sentenced by time as Bryan puts it, is symbolically forced to an end by an adult
teacher and darkness of the unavoidable night.
Bryan continues to claim that, more than anything else, Holden fears the biological
imperatives of sex and death associated with adulthood. He is hypersensitive to the exploitations
and insensitivity associated with the post pubescent world and to the fragile innocence of
children and so we see him retreating reflectively into thoughts and fantasies about children like
Jane Gallagher and, most importantly to Bryans argument, Phoebe.
Freud attributes distortion in a persons developmental phases to events that happened in
their childhood and upbringing. However, Salinger gives us little insight to Holdens past and
trauma behind his problems except for the death of his little brother and how it has plagued his
family since. Regardless, we still see a manifestation of issues in dealing with the movement into
the adult world and confusion in sex, death and the relation of his little sister to both of those
subjects. He is morally and sexually troubled in the idea that he may turn into the same perverted
society member he hates even though he is at times unaware of his own questionable tendencies.
As a result we see hum provoking fights he cant win, making sexual advances he cant carry
through with and alienating himself from almost all of the ppl he encounters.
Bryan divides his essay into three sections. In the first he examines polarities between
child and adult responses to life and the dilemma of impossible alternatives one has upon
entering the adult world. He contrasts D.B.s prostitution of his writing to Allies purity, seeing
D.Bs actions as a failure and Allie as dying before the temptations of adulthood could corrupt
him. We also have the contrast of Spencer who represents age and death with Phoebes
unattainable childhood beauty which holden laments on throughout the story even showing signs
of wanting to protect it. Stradlater and Ackley pose as two polar opposites as well; one being
sexually appropriative and one being sexually repressed, neither of whom Holden wants to turn
into, but both always enclosing in on him as he is forced to move toward the adult world.
Salinger spends 5 chapters reverting back and forth between the possibility of what Holden may
become if his manhood is thwarted represented by Ackley and the equally unacceptable model of
male aggressiveness seen in Stradlater. He also brings forth Holdens inability to recognize his
own preoccupations in this section so that the reader can better detect them throughout the story
especially in what Bryan calls the Phoebe section with his description of Jane and his inability
to kid the pants off of her even if he wanted to. Though he is speaking literally about joking
around with the girl, Bryan brings to light its sexual undertones and, once again, Holdens
position in a adolescent world when he should be more in ordinance with the adult one.
The five Stradlater Ackley chapters force the middle or second section where Holden
goes questing after experience and wisdom in his confusion and concern over the polar adult and
child worlds. While Holden does not approve of the two options prescribed for the adult world
by either of his school mates, his trip to New York only offers the option of a perverse adulthood
depicted by strippers, cross dressers and other sexual fetishes. His fear of growing into one of
these roles is made clear to the reader in Bryans analysis of Holdens reaction to the vulgar
taggings in Phoebes school and the museum though it might not be as clear to Holden himself.
Picturing myself catching him at it, and how Id smash his head on the stone steps till he was
good and dead and bloody. But I hardly has the guts to rub it off the wall with my hand. I was
afraid some teacher would catch me and think Id written it. His fear of being identified w/
some sort of pervert is reiterated when he goes to the mummy tomb in the museum and finds
the second vulgar tagging. Here we also see his obsession with wanting things to stay the same,
or as Bryan puts it, his general and constant longing for a state of changelessness like the
ability to stay in a world of childhood tendencies when he laments on how his beloved childhood
museum never changes but he did and Phoebe would and there was no stopping it, ultimately
leading him to become more depressed. Certain things they should stay the way they are...I
know thats impossible, but its too bad anyway.
Bryan further develops Holdens sexual and moral problems in his second section. He
claims that the urgency of Holdens compulsions creates a troubled desire to guard innocence
against adult corruption, for ex, his frantic need to save his sister from himself. He continues
his psychoanalytic exploration of TCITR to include an Oedipus complex applying to Holdens
sister instead of mother as the love object saying that normal maturation guides boys from sister
to other women but, since Holden is stuck, his sexuality sways precariously between reversion
and maturation. He shows how this is dramatized in Holdens quote Im 17 now and sometimes
I act like Im about 13. We can even see Holdens preoccupation w/childhood and sexuality
simultaneously when he is describing Sunny the stripper She was a pretty spooky kid. Even w/
that little bitty voice she had. He continues to talk about how Sunny scared him some which
Bryan connects to a fear of perverse tendencies within himself, perhaps also seen in his
description of Phoebe as being very and maybe too affectionate for a child when he sneaks in to
visit her one night and she throws her arms around him. Salinger brilliantly uses imprecise
adolescent language as the story moves forward and especially in the scenes where Holden is
dealing with Phoebe such as sort of, I mean, and and all in nervous repetition to
highlight the confusion and neurosis Holden is plagued with. One of these neurosis is the perhaps
the previously mentioned unconscious protection of Phoebe. Bryan sees the Shirley Beans record
as a symbol of this particular neurosis. The jazz singers knowledge of what the hell she was
doing suggest the loss of virginity and Holden may have unconsciously dropped and destroyed
the record shortly after buying it for Phoebe. It also aids the image of confusion that Holden is
captive to because the previous scene is the one where he begins his catcher in the rye fantasy
of protecting all of the children. He then violates this desire to protect by buying the record only
to return to protector by wrecking the album. He also highlights Holdens extremely suggestive
favorite scene from Hamlet where Ophelia is horsing around with her brother, taking his dagger
out of the holster, and teasing him all while he was trying to look interested in the bull his father
was shooting. That was nice. Bryan sums up all of these clues saying that the nearer Holdens
desires come to surfacing, the more hesitant he becomes til he seeks the advice of a former
classmate asking for expertise with regards to Holdens own troubles with not being able to get
really sexy with a girl. The classmate concludes that his mind is immature which lies in
coherence with Bryans claim that his girl issues stem from in his inability to correctly develop
through stages resulting in his confused feelings about Phoebe.
While he associated Phoebe with sexual tendencies he also associates her w/death by
bringing death and sex unsafely close to one another. When Holden is depleted and fleas to the
park at night he decides he needs to see Phoebe in case I died and all. This urge to see Phoebe
incase he dies leads to a scene that Bryan brings to the surface as having very sexual undertones.
It begins with his sneaking into his house and watching Phoebe sleep saying that kids look good
with their mouths open when they sleep unlike adults. He suddenly feels swell as he notices
particular traits of Phoebe around the room. Bryan says From here double entendres and
sexually suggestive images and gestures multiply truly awakening the reader to Holdens
psychological plot.
The scene comes to a point where Phoebe prods Holden to name just one thing he likes
and pushes him dangerously close to the truth that he cant name one and what that says about
himself. Her prodding drives him to possibly the most crucial and sinister point in the novel: his
fantasy about the catcher in the rye where he is protector of childhood innocence. The fantasy
turns sinister for the reader when Phoebe points out that the song is about romance, not
romanticism and Holden has unknowingly substituted a messianic motive for an erotic
one.
Playing off of this revelation of the fantasy, Bryan reveals the following chapter as a
mock romance between Holden and Phoebe that is at the same time tender and ominous only
continuing the uncertainness of Holden that has been portrayed throughout the book. You have
the two dancing, then Holden hiding in the closet when the parents get home and other
suggestions relative to a normal sexual encounter. I want to read this particular passage Bryan
chooses as a clear depiction. Then I finished buttoning my coat and all. I told her Id keep in
touch with her. She told me I could sleep with her if I wanted to, but I said no, that Id better beat
it...Then I took my hunting hat out of my coat pocket and gave it to her...She didnt want to take
it, but I made her. Ill bet she slept with it on...Id give her a buzz if I got a chance, and then I
left. From here until Holden sees Phoebe again he is in full flight, making plans to flea New
York for the wilderness and the west, as if he gets a frightening awareness of the innocence of
their intimacy moving into another sort of intimacy. This fear is further exemplified by Holdens
following encounter w/his old teacher Antolini and his rage at perverty bums and Janes drunken
stepfather that may parallel to his own unconscious design on a child. Holdens neurosis reaches
its max after the Antolini scene as he imagines himself disappearing and never making it to the
other side of the street as a reflection of his identity crisis and concerns about never reaching
maturity.
However, the story eventually leads to Holden reaching somewhat of an understanding in
the carrousel scene where Holden may recognize Phoebe will eventually venture into
womanhood and he cant stand in the way of that, represented by her grasping for the gold rings
on the carrousel. If they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let then do it...if they fall off,
they fall off, but its bad if you say anything to them. Bryan also claims that this coming to of
Holdens releases him from any intimate feelings he may have had towards Phoebe. While I
would like to believe this, I had trouble drawing the lines to that particular analysis as Bryan did.
Bryan focuses his third and final section of the essay on the symbolic elements within
Salingers book. He links masculinity to Holdens long-peaked hunting cap claiming it becomes
the most reliable symbolic designation of Holdens psychic condition through the novel. It reps
his masculinity when it is lost under the bed during a fight with Stradlater and is given to Phoebe
while she is in bed but also when Phoebe re entrusts it to Holden in the awakening of the
carrousel scene. In this final scene it also symbolizes Holdens basic human resources like his
birthright, humor, compassion, honesty and love that, like his hat in the rain, do provide some
protection but do not prevent an emotional collapse that lands him in the psychotherapy.
Personally I have always been a little skeptical of the whole Oedipus complex and sons wanting
to sleep with their mothers or sister or whatever the case may be. I feel like a lot of critics jump to apply it
to anything they can so I found myself trying to give Holden the benefit of the doubt throughout the book
thinking he just really wishes he didnt have to leave his own childhood and is, maybe, appreciating it in
other kids. However, I do think Bryan presents a pretty thorough analysis of Holden and his psychiatric
problems by not just saying he has some perverted issues but by drawing the connection to his somewhat
unconscious and uncertain feelings towards Phoebe with the simultaneous and perhaps equally unclear
fears about where he is headed in life as an adult. But because I think its a touchier subject I was
wondering how you all felt about it while reading the book and if Bryans article shed a new light on the
story for you at all or not.
confusing love for f for love for his lil sis
not perverty, just difficult of understanding level of intimacy (esp w/sexual desire now in his mind)
-caught in transition w/no one to help him
Overly sensitive young man so its diff for him!