The Neurotic Personality And The Insane Society

As one of the famous "reclusive writers" in the Unite States, Jerome David Salinger gets high reputation after World War II. His only novel The Catcher in the Rye is regarded as a" modern classic "in post-war American literature. This novel, together with Nine Stories, a collection of his short stories, and his novelettes Frany and Zooey, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour, and Introduction, makes him a representative of novels of a new kind. His stories are both mysterious and rigorous with their own characteristic style. Salinger's works reflects the inner conflicts of American adolescents after World War II and have great influences on Americans.The story told by sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield, the hero and narrator of the novel, is focused on what Holden has experienced in his three-day odyssey in New York after he is expelled from Pency Prep around Christmas for his bad grades. Equipped with Karen Horney's and Erich Fromm's psychoanalytical theories, I plan to make a journey into the inneT world of the protagonist in The Catcher in the Rye. My thesis proposes that the main character in the novel—Holden is a neurotic owing to the insane cultures he inhabits.The present thesis includes four chapters and the conclusion. The main contents are as following:Chapter I is introduction, which involves two parts. The first part is the introduction to J. D. Salinger's life and career, whose purpose is to find out, from some of the details about Salinger's life, the resource to the themes and skills in his writings so as to better understand them. The second part is the introduction of Salinger's main book—The Catcher in the Rye, that is, the main story and its social status and role in post-war American literature. After the publication of The Catcher in the Rye, the critical reviews were numerous and mixed, most of which were positive, and Salinger himself soon gained an acceptance as being among the most significant post-World War II American novelists. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is not only accepted artistically, but also is confirmed sociologically, and it may help adolescents enlarge their knowledge of life and help adults improve their understanding of adolescents so as to get rid of generation gap.In the second chapter, a brief introduction to the psychoanalytical theories of Karen Horney and Erich Fromm is made. As key members in the cultural school of psychoanalysis, they both hold that it is the cultural defects that cause neurosis. Then concerning the neurotic formation and mechanism, Horney makes a thorough elaboration. As complementary, Fromm provides penetrating analysis of the cultural defects of capitalism and their effects on individual; Erik H. Erikson stresses his identity theory.The third chapter is the main body of the thesis, which is the study of the world of Holden. It consists oftwo parts. The first part displays Holden's living surroundings—the insane society (including his family, the prep-school, and the society) , which lays the foundation for the later analysis of the other part. The second part attempts to analyze the psychology of the main character in The Catcher in the Rye and the causes of his mental insanity. Holden Caulfield, the protagonist, is diagnosed to be a neurotic of self-effacement, aggressiveness and detachment, which originates from the defects of the American culture and society at that time. His neurotic personality can be manifested in his anxiety, hypertension, self-contradiction, neurotic need for love, and self-idealization and the loss of the real self.The fourth part analyzes social and cultural codes and adolescent crisis in the world of Holden Caulfield. First, Holden's world not only embodies the rebellious character of American adolescents in postwar American culture, but also reflects the obsession caused by the pressure of postindustrial society among these adolescents, as social individuals. With the development of postindustrial society, American character has changed from the purely individualistic and inner-directed one to that of designing a certain mode for the development of individuals. The American prep school, which to a large extent has replaced the role of the family, is serving as an institution to educate, monitor, and socialize the offspring of the middle class. But Holden is deeply skeptical about it and has uncovered the cruelty of competition under the mask of fair play. Holden is the very product of the time when rebelling these social and cultural codes, and the world of Holden is the real depiction of a subculture under this specific socioeconomic condition of American society. Second, in the world of Holden, this spiritual obsession has also reflected the adolescent crisis existing in American society, which is manifested in adolescents' understanding of love and death.The last part is the conclusion, in which the whole thesis is generalized and summarized. And this part also points out the significant importance of Salinger's creation of The Catcher in the Rye and his depiction of the world of Holden. His works act as a kind of therapy for both his own neurosis and the social neurosis. Writing provides the way of realizing his idealized self and of curing his neurosis.