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Catcher In The Rye Psychological Analysis

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Regardless of how confused or stressed Holden might be about certain situations, he has his boundaries and is faithful to his principles, according to the research done by Helena Leite Pinto and Dr. Rosalia Neumann Garcia, Holden Caulfield: A Psychological Approach on The Catcher in the Rye’s Antihero. Pinto and Garcia use Freudian theory to support their claims about Holden’s behaviour. They believe that the reason he is, “the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life’’(Salinger 16), is due to his id making immediate decisions on how to handle a stressful situation. Although he feels guilt after the fact, and according to Pinto and Garcia the ego brings awareness that, “he is completely conscious that we cannot do whatever we please to.” …show more content…

A couple examples would be in chapter 6 when Stradlater declares Holden can not do anything w=right, since he wrote Stradlater 's paper about his brother Allie’s baseball mitt instead of its original prompt, so he rips up the paper right there and then and tosses it in the trash. He released his anger into the paper as a defense mechanism and ignored Stradlater afterwards. Soon after, in the chapter, Holden asks Stradlater about Jane, because he feels something fishy went on, but he did not answer any questions clearly, which frustrated Holden. He projected his anger at Stradlater which in time turned into a fight between the two, leaving Holden all beat up and bloody. He did not take any action of displacement at that moment because his feelings were too overwhelming to bear. This situation also happens verbally with Sally, a girl he took on a date, when she rejected his ideas, causing him to have a “Freudian Slip,” which is when you say something you did not wish people to know about, when he tells Sally, “you give me a royal pain in the ass’’ (Salinger 133) This action may have come from the id of his unconscious, and bubbled up to the surface with his feelings of annoyance with

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