A Psychoanalytical Study Of The Catcher In The Rye

The Catcher in the Rye reflects the spiritual crisis of modern Westerners; this paper aims to revealthe origin of this crisis. The research mainly goes on from three aspects.First, the main content of the novel can be compressed in three conversations between theprotagonist Holden and other characters. By analyzing the three conversations, this paper finds outHolden’s love, aversion and his spiritual pursuit and puzzle.Second, this thesis defines the personalities of Holden by Freud’s theory of personality. In thisnovel, Holden had no traditional id, which had transformed into the same thing as his super-ego in theprocess of his spiritual pursuit. His super-ego is to pursue and protect innocence, genuineness andbeauty; just the role of the catcher in the rye. Holden’s antipathetic and miserable status in ordinary lifeis the representation of his ego. Through Freud’s theory, this paper analyzes the relationship betweenHolden’s id, ego and super-ego and draws a conclusion that the nature of Holden’s spiritual crisis is notthe contradiction between individual and society, but the contradiction between the rules of society.Third, basing on the tragedy theories of ancient Greek and Zhu Guangqian, this paper believes thatthe origin of this contradiction is originated from human civilization, which can explain the resonanceof the novel’s readers from different times and countries, also can explain the popularity of the novel.According to the conclusion and combining with the reality of Chinese society and Holden’s growthcourse, the paper makes an inference that the ways to solve the spiritual crisis are only humanisticeducation to children and the spreading of literary and art works. This thesis contains six chapters:The first chapter is the introduction; introduces the research background of The Catcher in the Ryeand puts forward three questions.The second chapter is the literature review; summarizes the theme of human tragedy in previousstudies and reviews the result of psychoanalysis criticism to The Catcher in the Rye.The third chapter is about the fundamental theories of Freud; and explains the reasons why usingthe research approach.The fourth, fifth chapters are the main body of this paper, answering the three questions mentionedin chapter one.The last chapter is the conclusion; concludes this paper and makes inference.