DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES of HERO and the SEARCH for the SELF in The

CATCHER in the RYE

GÖKÇE ULUSCU

NOVEMBER, 2018
DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES of HERO and the SEARCH for the SELF in The
CATCHER in the RYE

by
GÖKÇE ULUSCU

DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MA
IN
ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE DEPARTMENT

YEDITEPE UNIVERSITY
NOVEMBER, 2018
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I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and
presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare
that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all
material and results that are not original to this work.

12\11\2018
Gökçe Uluscu
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ABSTRACT

Literary world has been accustomed to have mighty and supreme heroes since the

ancient times, while the concept of anti-hero is relatively new and different from the

former. A lot have been written about and contemplated on heroes when it is

compared to anti-heroes about which it is more difficult to find a research or criticism.

Exploring the depths of an anti-hero with a psychoanalytic approach would be more

contributive and innovative, in this sense.

In this study, it is intended to make a psychoanalytic reading on a different type

of hero by chiefly circling around the anti-hero of The Catcher in the Rye which is a

milestone in American literature by J.D. Salinger, who is one of the pioneers of his

time in terms of putting a new brick in the wall by contributing this new point of view

about the concept of hero. This thesis mainly focuses on the protagonist of this book,

Holden Caulfield who could be considered as an anti-hero stereotype and specifically

his inner search for his self.

By dealing with the psychological development and the inner journey of the main

character of the book, this study also aims to shed light to the psychological

development of Holden Caulfield. How he leads himself to a state of mind which is

eventually causes a kind of alienation from society is examined and this alienation’s

self-destructive outcomes on his very self —which he is yearning to find and make

meaningful— are tried to be portrayed.

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ÖZET

Antik zamanlardan bu yana, insanüstü güçlere sahip kahramanları edebi dünyada

görmeye alışkın olmamıza rağmen, anti-kahraman kavramı nispeten daha yenidir.

Böyle güçlü kahramanlara dair pek çok şey yazılıp çizilmiştir; fakat anti-

kahramanlarla ilgili bir eleştiri ya da araştırmaya ulaşmak ise daha güçtür. Bu

bakımdan, psikanalitik yaklaşımla bir anti-kahramanın derinliklerine inmek daha

yenilikçi ve faydalı olacaktır.

Bu çalışmada, kahraman olgusuna getirdiği yeni bakış açısı ile edebi dünyaya

yaptığı katkı yadsınamayan, zamanının öncüleründen J.D. Salinger tarafından kaleme

alınmış olan, Amerikan yazınının kilometre taşlarından The Catcher in the Rye

romanının baş kahramanı üzerine eğilinerek, farklı türden bir kahraman olgusuna

psikanalitik bir okuma yapılması amaçlanmıştır. Bu tez, genel anlamda, bir anti-

kahraman stereotipi olan Holden Caulfıeld ve onun içsel arayışı üzerinde durmaktadır,

Kitabın esas karakterinin psikolojik gelişimi ve içsel yolculuğunu ele alarak, bu

çalışma aynı zamanda Holden Caulfield’in psikolojik gelişimine ışık tutmayı

amaçlamaktadır. Kahramanın toplumdan soyutlanmasına yol açacak bir duygu

durumuna nasıl geldiği ve bu soyutlanmanın aslında anlamlı kılmaya çalıştığı kendi

benliği üzerindeki yıkıcı sonuçları resmedilmeye çalışılmaktadır.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Prof. Dr. M. Oğuz Cebeci

who has always been of a great help not only with his knowledge and experience, but

with the support that he has given to me as well. When my special interest in the field

of psychoanalysis came together with the joy of applying theories during the lectures

of Oğuz Cebeci, I had already decided to work on my thesis under his supervision in

the middle of the academic year in which I took my MA courses.

I also need to express my gratitude to the instructors and staff of The English

Language and Literature Department of Yeditepe University due to their help and

support during my this whole MA process.

There are also a bunch of people thanks to whom I feel lucky and to whom I

would like to express my gratitude and appreciation. First of all, I thank my parents

who have always done their best with self-sacrifice during my life, and my sister and

brother whose presence alone have always been a help and support. I am also grateful

to my uncle Prof. Dr. Selahattin Güriş who has been one of the most important people

in my life and my career with his guidance. Finally, I would like to thank my friends

Derya Nair, Ezgi Özden, İpek Alper, Ali Tuzcu and Şafak Tahmaz; and special thanks

to Hakan Kalaycı, the one who has accelerated this process for me with his great

moral support and help.

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. 1 Five hero modes of a narrative according to Northrop Frye......................... 4

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig 2. 1 Developmental thresholds based on Masterson's development stages ........... 28

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

APPROVAL....................................................................................................................I

PLAGIARISM ...............................................................................................................II

ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................III

ÖZET ........................................................................................................................... .IV

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...........................................................................................V

LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................ VI

LIST OF FIGURES .....................................................................................................VII

1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 1

2. MAIN CONCEPTS IN A BROADER SENSE ......................................................... 7

2.1 A Closer View of Anti-hero ................................................................................. 7

2.2 Anti-hero in American Fiction ........................................................................... 12

2.3 Psychological Aspects of Anti-hero................................................................... 16

2.4 Inner Search for the Self .................................................................................... 22

2.5 Alienation ......................................................................................................... 411

2.6 Along with its “How?” and “Why?”: Self-Destruction and Self-Destructive

Behaviors ................................................................................................................. 45

3.APPLICATION ........................................................................................................ 48

3.1 An Anti-hero with a Red Hunting Hat: Holden Caulfield ................................. 49

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3.2 The Relationship with the Family Members and the Effect of Them on Holden

Caulfield ................................................................................................................... 54

3.3 Holden and His Social Environment.................................................................. 62

3.4 Holden’s Self-Image and Unconscious Fantasy Issues ..................................... 67

3.4 Defense Mechanisms of Holden Caulfield ........................................................ 75

3.5 A Boy with an Imaginary Audience as an Imaginary Friend & His Schoolboy

Jargon ....................................................................................................................... 81

3.6 An Anti-Hero in the Middle of Isolation ........................................................... 84

3.7 Self-Destructive Aspect of Holden Caulfield .................................................... 88

4. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 91

REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 95

CURRICULUM VITAE .............................................................................................. 99

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1. INTRODUCTION

Hero and its related concepts comprise a comprehensive field to discuss upon and

contemplate on. The development and the transformation of the figure of hero within the

literary canon throughout time have brought about new questions and topics to argue.

In this work, I am going to deal with the anti-heroic protagonist of The Catcher

in the Rye by J. D. Salinger and make a psychoanalytical approach to the character in

order to highlight his psychic development, inner search for the self and his quest as a

hero. Before making such an approach and focusing on the anti-hero concept, I am going

to give some information about the concept of hero and its transformation throughout

time.

As a literary term, should a hero have a specific function or express human

beings' existence ideologically, rationally and psychologically? In other and more

extensive words, does a hero have to embark on a quest in literary world in order for our

—as readers— collective unconscious and perspectives to be shaped and transformed?

While handling this subject, I am going to benefit from the contributions of some specific

writers such as Norman Holland, Northrop Frye, Masterson, Heinz Kohut.

As a product of literature, a hero is a constructed figure. Like all other constructed

things —and all literary elements, it is expected to have a role and serve something,

accordingly. “In helping to pattern the relationships among basic beliefs, values, and

behaviors that organize social interaction, (heroes) produce common social

understanding of new social conditions.” (Breen & Corcoran, 1982, p. 14) How a hero

functions and achieves these goals differ according to the type, the content and the
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historical position of the work. To examine the concept of the hero throughout time, we

should go back to myths as the first step. In a world of different cultures and traditions,

there are different mythologies and they all have heroes narrated in their stories, but these

different heroes do not differ from each other that much in terms of features and they

have more or less similar virtues, values and sometimes even family backgrounds. In this

sense, hero becomes an archetype who has some certain properties which both are

physically and personally fixed. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell

divides the adventure of a hero archetype into sections which pave the way of the

transformation and the inner journey of the hero. “First stage of the mythological journey

—the call to adventure— signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred

his spiritual center of gravity.” (Campbell, 58) What is called as “destiny” in those myths

must be what is required by the plot for the transformation of the hero and to make him a

virtuous, strong, loyal and mighty hero. This transformation is a gradual one during

which the hero must prove himself by accomplishing the tasks given to him, by enduring

the trials and by undergoing also an inner journey simultaneously. Suffice to say, this is

what makes a mythical story psychological and universal. In other words, having roots in

human minds creates a reaction in us, in our collective unconscious. In his The Dynamics

of Literary Response, Norman Holland conceptualizes this as “resonance”:

Myths seem to have the power to evoke or resonate our deepest selves. The

religious implicit in these myths or rituals must also somehow be in tune with

our deepest selves.... Mythic criticism thus paves a way for the rather vague

theism so much in vogue now —on the basis of our subjective experience of
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resonance... Most myths critics, I think, believe that myths in literature make us

resonate without our being consciously aware of them (Holland, 1968, p. 246).

Although the main subject of this study is not myths and mythical heroes, the

quotation above helps us acknowledge the psychological link between our minds and the

experience of the heroes. We react to this and it takes us directly to the relationship that

we establish between ourselves and a hero. In a broader sense, our identification with the

hero is a result of the relationship between the defense mechanisms1 of the hero and the

those of ours, which leads us to identify ourselves with a character with whom we have

the same defense mechanism as the dominant one in common. The point here is that the

transformation mentioned above arouses our interest as readers to make a connection,

create identification and thus get pleasure while reading those stories. This notion may

bring some questions and subjects of arguments along: Wouldn’t it be difficult for the

contemporary reader to identify herself/himself with the hero who usually gets a

supernatural help and reward? Or, may this kind of gap between an ordinary human

being and the mighty hero have been the very reason of the transformation of the hero?

This is a transformation from a larger-than-life one to a normal human being who must

deal with the difficulties without a heavenly aid.

First of all, accepting the Jungian assertion that a hero is an expression of our

psychological existence and our consciousness, it would be no surprise that concept of

hero and its patterns has undergone a change throughout time. According to Norman

1
In order to deal with conflict and problems in life, Freud stated that the ego employs a range of defense
mechanisms. Defense mechanisms operate at an unconscious level and help ward off unpleasant feelings
(i.e. anxiety) or make good things feel better for the individual.
(https://www.simplypsychology.org/defense-mechanisms.html)
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Holland, we satisfy ourselves through a character. Some specific needs and feelings of us

are shaped via their language and actions. Our “identification” with a character becomes

a synthesis of projection and introjection because of this, since some certain drives and

defenses are taken in from the character. This process of introjection continues through

the entire work in “willing suspension of disbelief” (Holland, 1968, p.277).

To understand the concept of hero better and to look at the different types of heroes

from a clear point of view, the chart of hero modes which are developed by Northrop

Frye would be useful here:

Table 1. 1 Five hero modes of a narrative according to Northrop Frye

1.Mythic The hero is superior in kind and environment

to us.

2.Romantic The hero is superior in degree and in

environment to us.

3.High-mimetic The hero is superior in degree but not in

environment.

4.Low-mimetic The hero is neither superior in degree nor in

environment.

5.Ironic The hero is inferior in power or intelligence

to us.
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The notion of having a hero who is “human human” has brought new themes,

patterns and features together, accordingly. This kind of a hero corresponds to the “low-

mimetic hero” which is one of the five essential types put forward by Northrop Frye and

is one of us, not superior —it corresponds to anti-hero. And this modern hero with flaws,

imperfections and failures as a normal human being has opened a new door behind which

the concept related to hero barely exists: The concept of anti-hero who does not feel

drawn to any virtue, value or a moral understanding but to that of her / his own one.

Dating back to Greek tragedies and mythology, the anti-hero is not a new concept, but

has not been a favorite one. If we were to go back to the very question why we have

heroes and why they have transformed and changed through time, it would more likely to

make sense quickly. But when we raise the same question for anti-hero, it is relatively a

more complex issue. For instance, one may ask what makes it necessary to have anti-

heroes or how we get pleasure reading them. We can use these assumed questions to

clarify the subject and explain thoroughly. First, we don’t need to discuss here whether it

is a necessity to have such heroes in literature or not, but we should accept that

sometimes a positive, and a convenient character can be insufficient for our

identification. When the reader finds an innocent and decent character boring, it is no

surprise that she/he feels closer to the ones who are directly opposite. In these

circumstances, a narrative which revolves around such a character could be much more

appealing. Because, as mentioned above, it is a matter of identification and establishing a

relationship based on the features, defense mechanisms and other things which draw the

reader’s attention unconsciously.

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What makes the concept of anti-hero significant for this study is that the critical and

alienated protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is going to be

examined. His correspondence to that type of hero and his inner search for the self are

what make him eligible, in other words. The main psychological aspect of this search and

the most exacerbating factor of this search of the self, I am going to focus on the

protagonist’s alienation which leads his probable self-destruction unconsciously. That is

to say, the hero’s search is mostly triggered by his self-destructive alienation. Before

applying any psychoanalytic theory or interpreting the novel within the light of these

aspects, in the following chapter I am going to focus on these terms and what has been

written and interpreted upon the related subjects and their contributions to our subject.
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2. MAIN CONCEPTS IN A BROADER SENSE

2.1 A Closer View of Anti-hero

“In our primitive days, our literary heroes were nearly gods,” is an evaluation by

Northrop Frye and it is enough to give an idea about what was going on about heroes in

the distant past. Already having discussed the fact that time has passed, things have

changed in the literary canon and what we have as a hero figure in modern literature is

far more different than that of times of yore, it is time to move on with the concept of

anti-hero to examine it in detail and more specifically.

To avoid the relatively common confusion about the topic, I should first mention that

an anti-hero is neither a villain nor an antagonist. To be able to be called villain, she/he

must be malicious and evil, must show wicked character traits, which are not the case

with the anti-hero. Because an anti-hero does not have cruel intentions for no reason, but

rather has problems with adapting to the rules, norms and values of the society in which

she/he lives. This problem of adaptation may arise from different issues such as the age,

environment or the family background of the anti-hero that shape the psychological

aspect of the character, which is a subject I am going to focus on later.

Interested in the subject of psyche in general as a psychoanalyst, Carl Gustav Jung

states that we hate, love, desire, condemn or appreciate something not only consciously,

but also unconsciously at the same time. This kind of reactions also are parts of our

“collective unconscious” which is inherited and conveyed through generations.

In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal

nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on
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the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system

of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all

individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is

inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only

become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic

contents (Jung, 1968, p. 43).

This collective unconscious unifying us with psychological bonds could be the very

reason of the repetitive patterns we encounter in literature. More generally, they could be

seen almost in every genre of fiction. Even though literature is a branch of art and there

has been a question of whether a work of art should be for art’s sake, there is an

undeniable fact that literature is something that has an audience demanding to be

satisfied. In simplest terms, if a theme, pattern, figure, or motif keeps on existing within

the tradition, then it means that it is appreciated by the reader. The same condition is the

topic of question here for the concept of anti-hero which has survived since ancient

times, while the supreme hero figure has faded away. First, the anti-hero’s having both

negative and positive personality features make her/him human. In his In Praise of

Antiheroes, Victor Brombert discusses the same subject by considering anti-heroic

characters in direct contrast to supreme and mighty ones:

[ ]...Such characters do not conform to traditional models of heroic figures; they

even stand in opposition to them. But there can be great strength in that

opposition. Implicitly or explicitly, they cast doubt on values that have been

taken for granted, or were assumed to be unshakable. This may indeed be the
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principal significance of such antimodels, of their secret strengths and hidden

victories. The negative hero, more keenly perhaps than the traditional hero, or

wish to see ourselves. The antihero is often a perturber and a disturber

(Brombert, 1999, p. 2).

Indeed, the matter is simply that a heroic figure does not correspond to us as human

beings and make barely sense in our non-heroic lives. Thus, we seek some part of

humanity and essence of imperfection in what we read or watch. Such a demand from us

brings about the question if we have even the slightest expectation that the anti-hero we

encounter in a fiction would undergo a kind of change which is supposed to provide their

redemption. David Hume, Scottish philosopher and historian, asserts that anti-heroic

issues are not fixable, and they are not open to education. He pushes the lines of criticism

by saying "A system that denies values, as Dr. Hutchins observes, makes education

impossible… Education seeks truth; anti-heroism denies its existence. Education seeks

meaning in human life, justice in human affairs, dignity in human aspirations; anti-heroes

deny all human purpose save evolutionary survival." Doesn’t agreeing with this

argument mean betraying our wish of seeing humanly elements mentioned above? What

is discussed here is a different perception from the subject of great-human hero, but isn't

it a humanly reaction to question, criticize or wish to deconstruct what seems

inappropriate, as well? In contrast with the decent, appropriate, morally accepted hero

who adheres to her / his values of the society, an anti-hero would defy those values if

she/he considers them faulty and would not want to be a part of it, which would make

her/him regarded as rebel. Despite what Humes expresses, meaning in human life and
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human purpose are not that superficial issues for the anti-hero; because it should not

mean that the anti-hero of a fiction is totally reckless about these moral issues. By

defying the moral values of the society, the anti-hero would not refuse any kind of moral

understanding, but she / he would prefer to establish her / his own if she / he believes that

it is the right thing. This is what makes the point significant in that it helps us to clarify

the difference between an anti-hero and a villain. A protagonist who conflicts with the

society and its institutions does not give a desperate impression as much as Hume claims

and we cannot categorize her / him as a morally-wicked figure. This is an aspect closer to

villain whose main function is to ruin things that are on the side of other characters,

especially the hero.

Brombert, after describing the anti-hero as “a perturber and a disturber” ,goes on by

saying:

At stake are large issues. Across the ages, the “hero” has reflected, at times

determined, our moral and poetic vision as we try to cope with the meaning or

lack of meaning of life —much as tragedy, or broadly speaking, the tragic

spirit— answers our deep need to bestow dignity and beauty on human

suffering...But what is the heroic temper, and what is this notion of the hero

against which so much of modern literature seems to be in reaction?...They were

associated with an age of myth, when men and gods were said to have come into

close contact...Heroes are defiantly committed to honor and pride. Though

capable of killing the monster, they themselves are often dreadful, even

monstrous...[] One might speak of a morality of will and action. Whether the
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hero fights and kills the monster, rushes toward his own undoing, or proudly

shoulders his role as rebel against superior forces... (Brombert, 1999, p. 2-3).

Unlike traditional hero, modern one does not struggle with monsters, and for the anti-

hero, it is much more complicated, because she/he has to fight with a monstrous self and

society.
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2.2 Anti-hero in American Fiction

The place of the hero concept in American fiction in terms of popularity has a driving

force behind it. To have a broader opinion about it and the general atmosphere —

socially, politically and culturally— of the time, I am going to look through the subject in

detail.

Not being able to erase the marks of World War I, the lost generation2 of the

American nation gradually did their turn, and their children faced a new atmosphere of

depression which was caused by the effects of World War II. After returning home from

the battle fronts, young American men were then ready to take over a new responsibility

for their country which was to establish families and produce children who were to be the

insurance of their nation. “Take the 3,548,000 babies born in 1950. Bundle them into a

batch, bounce them all over the bountiful land that is America. What do you get? Boom.

The biggest…boom ever known in history.”3 The children of this “baby-boom”

movement were the young generation of the 60’s and 70’s, brought up in suburbs and

underwent a relatively isolated adolescence period. They were rather different from the

former generation in terms of their perspective, worldview and attitude towards moral,

social and political issues. Judging, criticizing and objecting to the values of elder

generation and questioning the established phenomenon, the younger one ignited an

activist movement whose impacts could be seen even in the long run within the society.

Modernism was one of the concepts to which they opposed, since they considered it void

for bringing a promising future. This point of view led to the rise of post-modernism

2
“Lost Generation” is a term referring to the young generation witnessing the World War I in the American
society and promoted by Gertrude Stein.
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which seemed much more appealing. Such a shift to a post-modern understanding

marked the lifestyle of the society and the majority of the young people witnessing those

times. During the civil rights movement, American youth began to challenge against

settled rules and traditions which they regarded as wrong and faulty such as

discrimination and iniquity.

[ ]…Their investigations of the ideological bulwarks of American society led

them to argue that more than individual opportunity needed to be unblocked to

create a more just and fair system. They challenged the integrity and virtue of

basic institutions and values that had taken on the cover of American tradition,

like the nuclear family, anticommunism, the economic bottom line, and material

progress (Farber, 1994, p. 3).

In his book The Anti-Hero in the American Novel: From Joseph Heller to Kurt

Vonnegut, David Simmons uses this quotation to explain that generation’s desire to

reassess the values which had all been set and to challenge them.

What makes all this information relevant to our main subject in this section is that

the anti-hero is directly connected to the events that has shaped the general outlook of the

society, as mentioned before. Different from the classical hero figure who is harmonious

with the values of the society, defiant, challenging and questioning anti-heroes were very

welcome by such a generation. In an atmosphere where such rules and norms are

prevalent, reading or watching a character who resists the enforcements by the society

and tradition which did not fit their ideals led to the identification and appreciation by the

audience in a broader sense. Their wish to see a realistic figure who is among us and who
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tries, fails, aspires, gets disappointed —and so on— could be the main reason of such an

increase of the believable characters in fiction genres.

The movies including anti-heroic figures and shot between 60’s and 70’s were

superior in number —Michael Corleone (The Godfather), Barry Lyndon (Redmond

Barry), Harry Callahan (Dirty Harry), Han Solo (Star Wars), Alex DeLarge (A

Clockwork Orange), Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver), Jim Stark (Rebel Without a Cause) —

when compared to the earlier examples. Examples from the world of American literature

—Invisible Man (Invisible Man), Cross Damon (The Outsider), James Bond (James

Bond series), McMurphy (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) — in those years were the

products of the newly-flourished understanding. And The Catcher in the Rye (1951) in

which we witness the struggle of a young boy against the structure of the society was one

of them. The protagonist, Holden does not feel content and he tries to escape from where

he belongs. He longs for a sense of belonging somewhere, as a result.

This new atmosphere filled with different shades of gray carried mostly by its anti-

heroes has kept its popularity and prevalence up until now, as we could add new names

on the list if we were to enhance it in a chronological order. But the point here is clear:

The effects of anti-hero have been widespread ranging from comic books and teenage

literature to action films and dramas, which indicates that this concept is applicable to

almost all genres based on reality and realistic issues of human life in American fiction in

general.

I have included this information about anti-heroes in American fiction to give a

general idea about The Catcher in the Rye and its protagonist, Holden Caulfield. To

understand the work and its anti-hero better, it is necessary to shed light to the conditions
 15

of the time and the American fiction in those times. In the next chapter, I am going to

proceed with anti-heroes in a deep sense and examine the psychological side of the

concept.
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2.3 Psychological Aspects of Anti-hero

Compared to great-man heroes, anti-heroes’ psychological aspects are directly connected

to those of its audience.

[ ]…it is the questioning aspect of rebellion that advances the figure beyond any

point he would have been able to reach by merely refusing to prolong his

adherence to a system of oppression, be it physical or ideological. By exceeding

the boundaries established for him by his antagonist the anti-hero demands that

he is treated as an equal. What may have originally been nothing more than an

adamant resistance on the part of the anti-hero against the oppressive nature of

‘the system’ becomes the very personification of the figure as he begins to value

a humanistic self-respect above everything else, proclaiming that it is preferable

even to life itself (Simmons, 2008, p. 7).

This reevaluation of “humanistic self-respect” might be the very reason why we identify

ourselves with an anti-hero. Having both a positive side which is redemptive and a

negative one which marks the hopeless situation of the character, the anti-hero maintains

the balance between pure-proper role model and an evil figure. This makes her / him

complete the first step of credibility and factuality. Accepting the real human character

the way she / he is, because of the belief that the human dignity is a whole within, the

reader should acknowledge that what makes a human human includes imperfection.

However, such a resolution brings about a more complex issue involving the question

whether the author wants us really to like the character or not. Does an author lead us to
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have an emotional and psychological bond with the anti-hero unconsciously, or does she

/ he would define it as “an exile deprived of his psychic space”?4 Or, further to that, does

being an exile deprived of his psychic space—a concept which is going to be explained

in detail later along with alienation and self-destruction— make a negative connotation

and wouldn’t it be otherwise? At this point, “justification” enters the stage and plays its

role as a key to solve the complexity of the argument. Unlike the traditional hero who

commits well-accepted actions for well-accepted reasons, an anti-hero generally commits

things which are to be condemned and disapproved for the same reasons and this is what

justifies the anti-hero’s actions. In other words, an anti-hero does not commit a crime or

acts against the rules of the society just to give harm or do things which are attributed to

a villain. An anti-hero does such things just because she / he thinks that would be right.

Thus, such a justification allows us to develop empathy and identify ourselves with the

character:

Hoffmann (1987) and Zillman (1991, 1994, 2000) identified empathy as the

crucial mechanism that governs this process of emotional involvement. For

example, we respond with empathy to situations that evoke positive emotions in

liked characters; we respond with counter-empathy to situations that evoke

positive emotions in disliked characters. The intensity of these empathic

responses is a function of the magnitude of our positive or negative affect

toward the characters, which is governed by our constant moral judgment of

their actions. Therefore, the more proper we judge a character's actions, the

more positive our affective disposition toward that character. In turn, the more

4
The words of Kristeva for Narcissus of her Tales of Love.
 18

positive our affective disposition, the more intense our empathic response.

Conversely, the more improper we judge a character's actions, the more negative

our affective disposition toward that character. In turn, the more negative our

affective disposition, the more intense our counter-empathic response (Bryant &

Ewoldsen & Cantor, 2003, p. 71).

This theory of Zillman, “affective disposition” accounts for the major part of the

audience’s identification and more importantly, sympathy for the character; the audience

shares the issues, dilemmas, fluctuations of the anti-hero. What is important here is what

they regard as moral and to what extent their moral understandings are flexible to be a

part of such a sharing and create a positive identification:

Furthermore, the progressive, unfolding nature of drama allows the direction

and magnitude of our affective dispositions to create active expectations or

anticipatory emotions about characters. For example, not only do we like it

when good things happen to characters we like, but we also hope for good

things and fear for bad things to happen to those characters. Likewise, we

dislike it when good things happen to characters we dislike, so we fear for

prosperity and hope for misfortune to befall those characters. Ultimately, the

outcomes associated with these anticipatory emotions dictate our enjoyment of

or disappointment with a dramatic presentation. More specifically,

hoped-for outcomes will lead to enjoyment and positive reactions and feared-for

outcomes will lead to disappointment and negative reactions (Bryant &

Ewoldsen & Cantor, 2003, p. 71).

 19

What should be focused on carefully is that this theory circles mostly around morality,

thus anti-heroic fictions are rather exceptional here. According to the theory, how we

enjoy a narrative underlies how we like the characters and our expectations for them; and

our moral perspectives are what determine the most part of those. It is clear that the more

we like a character, the more we get involved in the fiction. But it gets complicated when

we like a character whom we don’t find moral. As mentioned before, sometimes a good

character does not draw interest and innocence may be found boring. When it comes to

anti-hero, we are most likely to be on the side of her/him, if our moral understandings are

rather flexible. Because we, as readers, need a justification to salve our conscience when

we begin to like an anti-hero and support her / his actions.

Another factor may because we know already that what we read is fiction, it becomes

much easier to feel sympathy. The concept of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “willing

suspension of disbelief” would be useful to understand that more comprehensively.

According to him, when we read something, we know it is not real, but we do not mind

that. For some time, we suspend our logical faculty.

In this idea originated the plan of the 'Lyrical Ballads'; in which it was agreed, that my

endeavors should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic,

yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth

sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief

for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith (Coleridge, 1973, p. 51).

As mentioned before, things which are supernatural and impossible to believe are not the

concern at this part, but what is relevant here is the state of “suspension” while reading.
 20

By giving reference to Coleridge and this term, in his book The Dynamics of Literary

Response, Norman Holland says that “...precisely our knowledge that we are dealing with

a fiction that enables us to experience it fully, to use it as a basis for a profitable

imagination; in a psychological sense, to experience within ourselves the transformation

of fantasy toward meaning.” So, a reader may as well suspend her / his moral values and

ethical perspective for the sake of her / his loved character that could very possibly be an

anti-hero who defies those values. If the reader believes that there is an unfairness to the

anti-hero —somehow by society whose norms are not suitable for the anti-hero or

another character who is considered moral—, she / he automatically tries to find

justifying elements instead of judging and criticizing. In his The Anti-hero in the

American Novel: From Joseph Heller to Kurt Vonnegut, David Simmons gives references

to many critics and draws attention to the concept of alienation —which is going to be

the subject of another section— as the main cause of the gap between the anti-hero and

the society which results in the bitter actions of the anti-hero:

Critics, such as Raymond Federman, Robert Scholes, Ronald Sukenick, Tony

Tanner, and Helen Weinberg (alongside many others), have emphasized the

absurd qualities of the 1960s novel, suggesting that its primary purpose is to

express the disconnection or alienation that has occurred between the individual

and society, as Weinberg proposes:

The world view of the absurdity novel sees the complete disjunction between

the social-political systems of men in the world and a system of higher being:

the focus of this novel’s world view is on this disjunction. To live acquiescent to

the terms of this world is to be passive; to allow the nonbeing of worldly

 21

routines and reasons to encroach upon the life of the self and its possibilities for

true being is to become a victim...Weinberg suggests that the protagonists of the

contemporary novel are in the absurd tradition of Kafka’s characters,

embodying similar qualities such as “arrest, guilt, self-victimization, alienation,

and the inability to use freedom positively and creatively (Simmons, 2008, p. 2).

The disturbing background of the anti-hero and the conditions that have led her / him to

such a state of mind have a strong connection with alienation and victimization

underlying the justified acts and the inner search of the anti-hero. To proceed step by

step, before explaining this alienation in detail, now I am going to examine the inner

search of the anti-hero which leads to her / his alienation and finally self-destruction.
 22

2.4 Inner Search for the Self

To examine the search for it, first, “the self” should be explained. What is self? How

could it be defined? As for the definition and the function of the self, many

psychoanalysts have made assertions and developed theories through time.

In his The Search for the Real Self, James F. Masterson puts the Freudian and Jungian

concepts of self together and shows the differences between these two:

In talking about the “self,” Freud used the word ich, in two senses: the self as

the whole person and the self as simply the ego or agency of the mind. These

two concepts have persisted down to the present, inspiring two distinct schools

of psychoanalytic thought about the self. The difference between the two

concepts is strikingly depicted in the classic split between Freud and Carl Jung

in 1912...Jung emphasized the self as a primordial image or archetype that

expresses a person's need for unity, wholeness, and the highest human

aspirations. This focus on wholeness characterized what would become the

holistic school of psychoanalytic thought and initiated a shift, for the Jungians,

away from the intrapsychic base, away from the importance of the ego, id, and

superego and their conflictual roles...In so doing, the Jungians downplayed the

depth of the individual's unconscious for the unconscious structures that all

people share in common. Freudians, on the other hand, concentrated on the ich

as ego, an agency of mind. Their concept of the self tended to become like an

abstract institution or agency that operated on a set of mechanical

principles...(Masterson, 1988, p. 21-22)

 23

To summarize;

Freudian self → as the whole person or as simply the ego (much more functional than id

and superego)

Jungian self → as a whole (not separately focus on id, ego, superego)

Masterson concludes that human beings could possess roughly two opposite types

of self which are “the real self” and “the false self”. While the real self depends mostly

on reality to maintain a psychic equilibrium, the false self depends mostly on fantasies

which are defensive. The false self is like a mask hiding imperfections, it is like an

escape and a result of postponing the wishes of the deeper level of the psyche.5

(Masterson, 1988, p. 3) According to him, the real self consists of “self-images” which

make us aware of our identity. “The self-identity emerges when the ego identity

successfully integrates and synthesizes the various self-images that are formed in the

psychological experiences of the individual; in simpler terms, when you manage a

relationship or a task using your own unique style, the experience is integrated to

reinforce your self-image” (Masterson, 1988, p. 25). Self-image could simply be

described as how we see ourselves from outside and our mental images that we create of

ourselves. It is one of the elements that comprise the self and the others are ideal self and

self-esteem. Besides self-image, it would be useful to mention unconscious self-image, as

well. It is related to the concept of unconscious fantasy, which is a subject that Holland

contributed to. He theorizes that human beings possess some certain unconscious

5
Freud described the “psyche” as the combination of the id, ego and superego.
 24

fantasies (Holland, 221) As a result of this relation to unconscious fantasies, unlike self-

image, unconscious self-image is not bare, and the individual does not act with

awareness. For instance, a narcissistic personality could have an inferiority complex on

the unconscious level, although this person has a very self-confident and bright conscious

self-image. Unconscious self-image could also be dealt with in terms of object relations,

which is a concept that is going to be handled in detail in the following pages. Inner

images of the self is directly related to these relations and past relationships have an

impact on the psyche on an unconscious level at present. Parental imagos6, especially,

manifest themselves in the development of one’s self. However, imagos related to self

also exist and these are on the unconscious level, as well. To lay bare the unconscious

fantasies and determine the unconscious self-image of an individual, psychoanalytic

approach is needed. As for the psychoanalytic approach to a text, it should directly be

related to the cause & effect relationship between the writer and her / his unconscious.

The reason why unconscious fantasies deserve a sole section in this chapter is that the

dominant unconscious fantasy within a literary text or the central unconscious fantasy of

the text developed by the main character is important in terms of analyzing and

understanding the narrative.

In Holland’s opinion, every literary product has a fantasy layer and we are not

consciously aware of its existence, as readers. This fantastic dimension is highlighted

through the content and form of a literary work. As I already mentioned in the previous

chapter, readers identify themselves with some certain characters due to their collective

6
Imago is generally defined as “an unconscious idealized mental image of someone, especially a parent,
which influences a person's behavior.”
 25

unconscious. Unconscious fantasies could also be corresponding to this collective

unconscious, thus leading to a kind of identification.

Such fantasies’ being unconscious is also related to the pleasure that the reader gets

while reading a text. According to Holland again, it may not be possible to get pleasure

on the conscious level, since our moral understandings may intervene and make us judge

or criticise instead of enjoying the narrative.

As a unity consisting of these components, the self is a gradually evolving

psychological structure that possesses organizational and integrative properties. What is

the most crucial to the development of an organizing structure is the integration of

affective and cognitive components of self.7 So, what do these terms “affective” and

“cognitive” mean?

Affect, in Otto F. Kernberg's words, are the inborn dispositions of the ego, with psychic

components which are organized to constitute the aggressive and libidinal drives and

they are the bridging structures between biological instincts and psychic drives. In

simpler terms, it is a sense or feeling activated as a reaction to a specific stimulant.

As for the cognition, it could simply be suggested that it refers thinking or reasoning.

These terms seem to belong to different fields, since one is related to emotions and the

other one to reason.

In the examination of the self, “self-objects” should also be mentioned, since they are

directly related to maintaining the self, according to Heinz Kohut. For Kohut:

7
The reference was given to “Demos, V., and Kaplan, S. "Motivation and Affect Reconsidered: Affect
Biographies of Two Infants." In Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought. Vol. 9. 1986.” in the book.
 26

At the heart of the theory lies the self, conceptualized as a mental system that

organizes a person’s subjective experience in relation to a set of developmental needs

(Wolf, 1988). Kohut (1971) called these needs “self-object needs” because they are

associated with sustaining the self and are satisfied (or not) by external figures in a

person’s life. Following Freud (1933), Kohut referred to people as “objects” of instincts,

even though he changed Freud’s theory considerably, including deemphasizing sexual

and aggressive instincts. Although the concept of self-object needs has become popular

within psychoanalysis (Wolf, 1988), it has yet to be studied empirically. The present

article is an attempt to remedy that deficiency by testing some of the theory’s core

propositions and linking them with constructs and methods of contemporary research in

personality and social psychology. According to Kohut (1971, 1977, 1984), the self

(viewed as a process or system that organizes subjective experience) is the essence of a

person’s psychological being and consists of sensations, feelings, thoughts, and attitudes

toward oneself and the world. Whereas Freud viewed the self as part of the contents of

the ego (somewhat like William James’s [1890] notion of the “me”), Kohut

conceptualized the self as the initiating center of the personality (Eagle, 1984), akin to

James’s “I.” In other words, Kohut viewed the self as a psychological force that explains

the development of a mature and healthy personality as well as the formation of

personality disorders (Shaver, Banai, Mikulincer, 2005, p. 5).

Kohut says that parents’ role is important as self-objects, because child is a

psychobiological unit interacting with the environment. The relationship with the

caregiver has a remarkable role in shaping the psyche. (Kohut, 1971, p. 218). “When

parents,” says M. Tolpin, “function as self-objects and consistently fail children, children
 27

suffer from what amounts to faults and failings in their own self-maintaining and

restoring psychic structure.” (Tolpin, 1987, p. 233) Due to the fact that I am going to

focus on and explain the parental role in detail in the next chapter, I am moving on with

another point.

Early adolescence is quite different cognitively, emotionally and psychodynamically

from latency period and late adolescence. At this stage, they become more vulnerable and

have a sense of self-fragmentation due to some changes in cognitive development.

“Consequently, when faced with a sense of self-fragmentation or disintegration, infants

activate the defense mechanisms of disavowal, denial, and dissociation against these

unacceptable and overwhelming affect states in an attempt to preserve the integrity of a

constricted and fragile self-structure.” (Schave, 1989, 33,44) This fragile self-structure’s

residues could be confronted during the period of late adolescence, which would be a

more disadvantageous case when compared to that of the early one. Tending to rely on

internal supports rather than externals, an adolescent begins to construct an integrated

self, which means becoming an integrated whole as a psychological being. “The self,”

says Kohut, “is a center of initiative and a recipient of impressions.” From this point of

view of Kohut, Greenberg and Mitchell state that “The self is no longer a representation,

a product of the activity of the ego, but is itself the active agent; it therefore carries more

theoretical weight than in the earlier view.” (Greenberg and Mitchell, 1983, p. 352)

The development of the self has got far in terms of having a basic structure until

reaching the period of adolescence, of course. As most of the psychoanalysts agreed

with, the development of one's self begins to shape during infancy. According to

Masterson, a newborn baby thinks her/himself fused with the mother and in later months
 28

separation occurs gradually. Based on observations of children and their mothers over

years, psychologists have identified the various stages of development (Masterson, 30).

This fusion with and separation from the mother has a significant role in the psychic

development of the child.

Fig 2. 1 Developmental thresholds based on Masterson's development stages

Suffice to say here, the self is a concept which has many branches, related sub-

concepts and associations, and they have so much to be examined all by themselves. So,

it should be better to narrow the subject and focus on the search for the self specifically.

Being a complex issue, one's search for her / his self has attracted attention and

preoccupied a wide range of areas —especially some kind of doctrines— from Zen

Buddhism to mysticism (Sufism), or maybe whatever that concerns on one's inner

development. One's search for meaning or psychological struggle to develop fully is a

broad subject which has nothing to do other than examining one's psychic development.

That may be simply why a lot has been written and made research about this subject:

human beings' search for a meaning begins and ends with their own inner conflicts,

desires and transformations. At the very beginning page of his The Search for the Real
 29

Self: Unmasking the Personality Disorders of Our Age, Masterson says that “The search

for meaning is the search for expression of one's real self, one's real self begins to

develop in early childhood, and one identifies it and articulates it through testing and

experiment in the environment to bring one's real self into harmony with the outer world

through work and love relationships.” From this “real self” point, he then follows,

We have personal and professional self-images, some known only to ourselves

and those closest to us, others displayed publicly for everyone to see. Under the

guidance of the real self, we can identify our individual wishes as they change

over the years and discover realistic ways to achieve them in our lives. The real

self allows us to take the steps to carve out our individual places in the real

world by finding the appropriate job, lifestyle, or mate. Our lives are then

characterized by a harmonious interaction between the intrapsychic real self and

the external environment, which, in turn, maintains our self-esteem. The real

self can accept and modulate the various, even conflicting, self-images and

resolve any apparent, temporary confusions… The real self understands that

what we are today is the product of the ever-shifting roles, behaviors, and

circumstances that made up the many self-images that fitted us over the years

(Masterson, 1988, p. 26).

As individuals, we maturate and construct patterns of emotions, thoughts and

perspectives within this process. They become the components of our self and

personality, and help us to determine how to act and react in specific situations. It goes

without saying that whether the real self or the false self is in action directly affects the
 30

result, which marks the importance of keeping a real self, even if it has flaws and

misleading.

Another subject related to the concept of the self within the frame of this study is the

splitting in the sense of self. It is a subject leading psychoanalysts such as Sigmund

Freud, Melanie Klein, Otto Kernberg and Heinz Kohut to make contributions to

conceptualize it.

In his Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defense, Freud divided the concept of

splitting into three groups: split-off psychic groupings, splitting of objects and affects,

and splitting of the ego. Just like the other forms of splitting, the splitting of the ego

which is the relevant one to our subject occurs through the splitting of representations.

With representations, what is meant is images of events, objects and individuals. By

grouping representations as good ones and bad ones, splitting process is actualized

almost fully with slight exceptions. For instance, for the splitting of the object, Freud

theorizes;

In so far as the objects which are presented to (the ego) are sources of pleasure,

it takes them into itself, “introjects” them...; and, on the other hand, it expels

whatever within itself becomes a cause of unpleasure (...the mechanism of

projection) ... For the pleasure-ego, the external world is divided into a part that

is pleasurable, which is incorporated into itself, and a remainder that is

extraneous to it. It has (also) separated off a part of its own self, which it

projects into the external world (Freud, 1940, p. 136)

 31

Implying the splitting of the self, the last sentence serves as a kind of summary in this

sense. What undergoes a splitting process in the splitting of the self is the consciousness

of the individual, according to Freud. In this process, there exist certain attitudes split and

“the two attitudes persist side by side without influencing each other,” says Freud. An

individual comes to acknowledge a situation with the company of disavowal, and its

result is clashing attitudes and ultimately splitting of the ego. (Freud, 1940, p. 23)

Melanie Klein was also interested in the concept of splitting. In her understanding of

splitting, a partition takes place within the psyche which was primitively caused by

contrasting affects:

I believe that the ego is incapable of splitting the object—internal and

external—without a corresponding splitting taking place within the ego.

Therefore, the phantasies and feelings about the state of the internal object

vitally influence the structure of the ego. The more sadism prevails in the

process of incorporating the object, and the more the object is felt to be in

pieces, the more the ego is in danger of being split in relation to the internalized

object fragments (Klein, 1975, p. 6).

In this sense, the ego is bound to be structured by the state of mind and psychological

apparatus of the individual. According to Klein, an individual keeps what is considered

good for her/himself and projects what is bad onto another person or an object just to

separate those two contrasting figures.

Another psychoanalyst who conducted studies on splitting of the ego, Kohut

mentioned this concept in his book The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Approach to
 32

the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders. His writings would

be a good source for understanding the splitting of the psyche and its function as a

defense:

Depending on the psychic location of the defenses, the resulting cleavage in the

personality is either (1) vertical, i.e., a split which separates a whole segment of

the psyche from the one that carries the central self, manifested by an alternation

between (a) states of grandiosity which deny the frustrated need for approval

and (b) states of overt feelings of emptiness and low self-esteem; and/or (2)

horizontal, i.e., a repression barrier, manifested by the patient's emotional

coldness and by his insistence on keeping his distance from objects from whom

he might want narcissistic sustenance (Kohut, 1971, p. 198).

That is the point where the concept of defenses make their appearance. Since I am

going to examine and explain the defense mechanisms of Holden Caulfield in the next

chapter, it would be helpful to demonstrate and illustrate the related defense mechanisms

here. Having already shown up, splitting shall be the first one of them.

All objects, notions or conditions are divided into two groups which are “good” or

“bad”. The individual sometimes includes her or his very self in either of these groups

and keeps the good ones as pleasant memories or sentiments, whereas the bad ones

maintain their presence as those which are unpleasant. These contrasting figures cannot

be unified, integrated or molded.

According to Masterson,
 33

The splitting defense mechanism, which usually recedes as the real self images,

persists as a principal defense against the abandonment depression. The

conflicting images of the good mother and the bad mother, the good child and

the bad one, and the feeling states associated with them (being loved or being

rejected) remain conscious but are kept apart so they do not influence one

another. It is as if they were closed off in two separate closets. The widespread

use of splitting fosters and deepens the other defense mechanisms as well as the

ego defects...The self-representation consists of a good self-image linked to a

good mother-image and a bad, inadequate, or deflated self-image linked to the

bad-mother image (Masterson, 1988, p. 78).

It's no wonder Masterson felt the need to explain and analyze the splitting defense

mechanism in his book The Search for the Real Self: Unmasking the Personality

Disorders of Our Age, since it is mostly encountered in the individuals having borderline

personality disorders. Such a disorder possesses the characteristic of converting the good

image of an object into a bad one (or vice versa) abruptly in different situations. That is

to say, the value and the position of an object or individual change and shift continuously

depending on these situations, Masterson states that this type of personality stems from

an unbalanced and defected relationship between the child and parent(s) during the

separation-individuation period:

Splitting fosters in the child's psychic structure a damaging leitmotif based on

the themes of reward for clinging and withdrawal for separation. These twin

themes repeated over and over as early interpersonal interactions between the
 34

mother and child become deeply internalized as stereotyped, fixated, and

unchangeable intrapsychic images and feelings, and eventually become locked

into the adult's entire personality structure (Masterson, 1988, p. 79).

In this sense, object relations are the milestones of the development period since they

shape the personality in relation to some objects and images. They stand at a crucial point

for the interactions with parents during the maturing process. “In the development and

configuration of the sense of identity, object relations' marked role is apparent. The

identification based relationships that the child develop and the factors she/he

appropriates for her/himself through internalization could be defined as the constituent

elements of the personality,” says Oğuz Cebeci in his book Psikanalitik Edebiyat Kuramı

and continues with the hypotheses of Melanie Klein and Otto Kernberg by whom the

relationship with the mother in the service of developing a splitting structure in the ego as

a defense is also studied and examined:

According to the Kleinian notions that Kernberg used while defining love

relations, the admittance of the experience of “merger” is a kind of repetition of

the “penetration” that aimed to be achieved vulgarly through the inside of

another body (that of mother) which is perceived as dangerous... Kernberg states

that in “psychologically regressive” love, the boundaries between I and not I

become blurry; in “passionate love”, there is both a merger and a sense of

maintaining a separate self...At this point, especially during the primitive

idealization of the borderline personalities, when the aggressive impulses

become intense, there may be a shift from a passionate love from a passionate
 35

hatred through a splitting occurring between the idealized object and the “bad”

object which is deteriorative for the self (Cebeci, 2009, p. 83-84).

This kind of impact of the relationship with the mother on one’s self is going to be

held in the next chapter. But, to amplify the ideas and hypotheses about the subject, it

would be profitable to mention Sigmund Freud here, since he conducted a comprehensive

study about this subject:

[]...”there is a conflict between the demand of the instinct and the command of

reality. But in fact, the child takes neither course, or rather he takes both

simultaneously. He replies to the conflict with two contrary reactions, both of

which are valid and effective. The two contrary reactions to the conflict persist

as the central-point of a split in the ego”... (Freud, 1955, p. 373,374)

Such a conflict, in other words, may result in the child's indulging the instinct or ignoring

it and diverting her / his interest to another thing. When it comes to decide which way to

pick, the fear stemming from a probability of a crisis is led by this kind of indulgence.

This kind of a conflict lays bare itself when it comes to the object relations that the child

develops and splitting of the ego gradually begins to actualize by keeping the “good”

mother image and the “bad” one apart. Then, it transforms into a mechanism that

separates almost all representations and images in the same way. “The two attitudes

persist side by side without influencing each other,” says Freud and it could be inferred

that unwanted memories, images or figures are not allowed to ruin those that are

pleasant.
 36

Another defense mechanism that is related to the subject is regression. The ego feels

the need to go back to an earlier period as a defense mechanism, according to Freud. The

main reason of such a need is the desire to avoid handling present issues or problems. It

may start being observed in the early adolescence period.

As a defense mechanism, regression functions as an attempt to cope with depression and

avoid the factors that cause it.

The failure to work through the depressive position may, however, lead to a

different outcome: certain symptoms, such as withdrawal from the mother and

other people, may become stabilized instead of being transitory and partial. If

together with this the infant becomes more apathetic, failing to develop the

widening of interests and acceptance of substitutes which is normally present

simultaneously with depressive symptoms, and is partly a way of overcoming

them, we may surmise that the depressive position is not being successfully

worked through; that a regression to the former position, the paranoid-schizoid

position, has taken place —a regression to which we have to attribute great

importance (Klein,1988, p. 120).

The fact that regression occurs under a remarkable amount of stress makes Klein's

hypothesis meaningful. Upon facing an unwanted situation, an adult or adolescent may

begin to act out in a way that is not a typical of their age. Giving responses like a child

may be a symptom of a depression and the individual may be trying to avoid it by doing

so, instead of solving the problem in a proper way.

 37

Jung takes this concept in a broader way and relates it to a stage that is non-sexual.

Opposing to Freud's ideas in this sense, Jung handles regressive behavior as a search for

the safe atmosphere of even-before-childhood stage.

Freud in his analysis follows this regressive tendency to the end and thus arrives

at the findings you all know…He has a special method of interpreting psychic

material, and it is partly because the material has a sexual aspect and partly

because he interprets it in a special way that he arrives at his typical

conclusions...And the same thing happens with the patient’s regressive

tendency. I have suggested that it is not just a relapse into infantilism, but a

genuine attempt to get at something necessary...We find that he is seeking

something entirely different, something that Freud only appreciates negatively:

the universal feeling of childhood innocence, the sense of security, of protection,

of reciprocated love, of trust, of faith—a thing that has many names. Is this goal

of the regressive tendency entirely without justification? Or is it not rather the

very thing the patient urgently needs in order to build up his conscious attitude?

(Jung, 1930, p. 31,32)

According to Jung, different interpretations are possible in terms of regressive

behavior, but all of these are linked to the “imago of the mother” and the child looks for

the intimacy and the symbiotic relationship with the mother which once existed. When

compared to that of Freud, Jungian regression could be considered as a more symbolic

and metaphorical. As it is “not just a relapse into infantilism”, it is possible to interpret

 38

regression with a broader viewpoint and free it partly from libidinal drives and associate

with the symbolic search for the symbiotic relationship with the mother.

As mentioned before, regression yearns for the basic symbiosis between mother and

child. An individual may need to regress to mother's protectivity but should come back

also. The main reason why she/he should come back is that we need to have personal

borders to construct a personality. We may look for our mothers and enjoy the intimacy,

but it cannot be maintained for a long time. This is the point where the ego makes the

distinction. The ego interferes with the primary process of thinking —the act of

visualizing an object of desire intentionally and triggered by the id, according to Freud's

concept of pleasure principle. The purpose of such an interference is to express a

regressive behavior for the benefit of the ego and take pleasure for a certain period

(Knafo, 2002, p. 26).

In addition to splitting and regression, it would be functional to mention projection

and projective identification. Projection is a term conceptualized by Sigmund Freud

again. As a defense mechanism, projection involves attributing one's behaviors, acts,

feelings, or thought to another individual. According to Freud, the main reason behind

such a projection is to cope with anxiety or stress led by these projected thoughts or

feelings; because they are mostly unwanted, and the individual finds the solution in

acting as if the other person possessed them. When it comes to projective identification

—more important for this study, it is a bit different and deeper form of projection.

Theorized by Melanie Klein, projective identification involves the wish for resembling

the other person to whom the feelings, thoughts or even unconscious fantasies are

projected:
 39

In so far as the mother comes to contain the bad parts of the self, she is not felt

to be a separate individual but is felt to be the bad self. Much of the hatred

against parts of the self is now directed towards the mother. This leads to a

particular form of identification which establishes the prototype of an aggressive

object-relation. I suggest for these processes the term ‘projective identification’.

When projection is mainly derived from the infant's impulse to harm or to

control the mother, he feels her to be a persecutor. In psychotic disorders this

identification of an object with the hated parts of the self contributes to the

intensity of the hatred directed against other people. Excrements then have the

significance of gifts; and parts of the ego which, together with excrements, are

expelled and projected into the other person represent the good, i.e. the loving

parts of the self. The identification based on this type of projection again vitally

influences object-relations. The projection of good feelings and good parts of

the self into the mother is essential for the infant's ability to develop good

object-relations and to integrate his ego. However, if this projective process is

carried out excessively, good parts of the personality are felt to be lost, and in

this way the mother becomes the ego-ideal; this process too results in weakening

and impoverishing the ego (Klein, 1988, p. 8,9).

Linking many of her hypotheses to object relations, here again Klein is looking for the

roots of projective identification in the relationship with mother and object relations. The

wish for uniting with the mother institutes the core of the projective identification. The

individual looks for an imago to whom she / he could attribute those feelings or fantasies.
 40

These fantasies do not need to be always desired and unwanted aspects of the self could

also be projected:

Projective identification is the basis of many anxiety-situations...The phantasy

of forcefully entering the object gives rise to anxieties relating to the dangers

threatening the subject from within the object. For instance, the impulses to

control an object from within it stir up the fear of being controlled and

persecuted inside it. By introjecting and re-introjecting the forcefully entered

object, the subject's feelings of inner persecution are strongly reinforced; all the

more since the re-introjected object is felt to contain the dangerous aspects of

the self (Klein, 1988, p. 11).

Just like all the mechanisms of defense, splitting, regression, projection and

projective identification serve to the benefit of the ego in handling situations and pieces

of reality. The degree of the harshness of reality determines the way of dealing with it

and the reactions of the psyche. This is only a part of what the “self” has to do with and

what shapes the self, along with other factors explained in this section. Being a

comprehensive and sophisticated issue, the concept of the self and its search for defining

itself are likely to broaden with the extension of related elements; and all these elements

affect the transformation and the journey of the self in its search for itself.
 41

2.5 Alienation

Lacan says, “The initial synthesis of the ego is essentially an alter ego, it is

alienated” which means that when it undergoes a process of a synthesis with its very self,

the outcome of the process is nothing but alienation. According to Lacan, subject is as

important as object and ego is a thinking subject. In this sense, when an individual

prefers to alienate her / himself, it means that subjectivity takes its place there (Feldstein

& Fink & Jeanus, 1996, p. 53). I am going to explain this concept of subject so that it

could make more sense within the frame of alienation.

Lacanian subject is something different from permanent self, soul or personality,

according to Bruce Fink. And this subject is a subject of desire which is divided into two

logical operations: alienation and separation. Alienation is a possible outcome of the

interaction between any language and an individual, and subject is potentially constituted

by this interaction (Fink, 1995, p. 79).

In another book, The Lacanian Subject, Bruce Fink states that,

Lacan's Other is at its most basic level, related to that other kind of talk. For we

can tentatively assume that there are not only two different kinds of talk they

come, vaguely speaking from two different psychological places: the ego (or self)

and the Other... Writers like Rousseau have beautifully expressed what Lacan

calls man's alienation in language. According to Lacanian theory, every human

being who learns to speak is thereby alienated from himself or herself —for it is

language that, while allowing desire to come into being, and makes us such that

we can both want and not want one and the same thing, never be satisfied when
 42

we get what we thought we wanted, and so on. The Other seems then to slip in the

back door while children are learning a language that is virtually indispensable to

their survival in the world as we know it..The very expression we use to talk

about it —“mother tongue”— is indicative of the fact that it is some Other's

tongue first, the mOther's tongue, that is, the mOther's language, and in speaking

of childhood experience, Lacan often virtually equates the Other with the mother”

(Fink, 1995, p. 3-7).

According to Lacan, Hegel's alienation is just a matter of the choice between two

individuals in which just one of them is able to win the fight, which Lacan finds partially

true, in other words, insufficient. Lacanian alienation which focuses on the concept of the

“other” considers the issue as something more than the psychic fight between two

individuals. "Alienation is constitutive of the imaginary order. Alienation is the

imaginary as such," he asserts.

The partial recognition of the self yearns for a completion within the light of the

totality of the other. It leads to what he calls as the imaginary order which constitutes and

directs the fantasies of the subject related to the wholeness of the other and the

fragmentariness of the very self.

Another theory put forward by Karen Horney is about how the obsession with what

other people think leads an individual to a state of alienation. Based on her theory, Joseph

W. Wollmerhausen states in his article that “to the degree an individual suffers from self-

alienation, his self-realizing and self-creating are impaired and thwarted. His life

becomes increasingly determined by others with the corresponding loss of autonomy.”

(Vollmerhausen, 1961, p. 41) According to her, within the process of self-realizing,

 43

conflicts and their possible solutions revolve around this kind of obsession and “these

turn an individual away from, and against, himself and produce a deep intrapsychic

conflict that he attempts to resolve in various ways, but always with increasing self-

alienation.” Such attempts and their negative outcomes could also be another subject of

argument. That is, if an individual is not able to establish firm and healthy relationships

despite her / his willingness, it is worth questioning. It takes us directly to the process

from the purpose at the beginning. Because, even if an individual wishes to form a

relationship with goodwill, it should mean that there is something wrong afterwards that

leads to the termination of the process, and the self-alienation of the individual

ultimately.

In this sense, alienation appears both as something natural to human beings and

something not. It is not innate in us, as people; but it is as if we are destined to be

estranged to the outer world and even to ourselves due to our characteristic as human

beings.

Parallel with those, the ideas of Erich Fromm about the concept of alienation is

worth mentioning: "By alienation is meant a mode of experience in which the person

experiences himself as an alien. He has become, one might say, estranged from himself.

He does not experience himself as the center of his world, as the creator of his own acts-

but his acts and their consequences have become his masters, whom he obeys, or whom

he may even worship. The alienated person is out of touch with himself as he is out of

touch with any other person." (Fromm, 195, p. 98) Unlike Lacan, Fromm does not seem

to be concerned on whether it is the destiny of human being and the results of our

alienation. His interest on the subject is rather allured by the reason why we become
 44

estranged, and he comes to the conclusion that we create a vicious circle by seeing

ourselves as an object of the system but act like we are not. The fact that we cannot

realize ourselves as the subject of the universe is the very reason of self-alienation within

this frame. Where their perceptions about alineation unite is the effect of the society on

the individual. Society is such an institution in which individuals are both subjects and

objects, and it is a system involving cause and effect; thus, it is no wonder that it

contributes to the subject-object dilemma of humans as social beings.

Considering that the concepts of “subject” and “object” are at present, I would also

like to bring up the term “introspection.” It could simply be described the act of

becoming both the subject and the object of one's own self, being, and awareness. “My

friend,” says Socrates, “care for your psyche...know thyself, for once we know ourselves,

we may learn how to care for ourselves." This focus on the self does not sound harmful at

the first step and it is not indeed. The problem begins when the individual begins to

spend so much time on her / his being —it shouldn’t be what Socrates suggests— and

self and reducing the actions that would be profitable in this sense. In other words, if this

process leads to a state of over-thinking and the individual begins to become a

complainer rather than a solver, it gradually deteriorates the future and present

relationships. The process of introspection is a conscious one, but replacing thoughts

with the actions is not. And the final outcome would be the alienation from the outer

world, and then from the very self of the one's own, and all these would be counted as the

self-destructive behaviors which I am going to examine in the next section.

 45

2.6 Along with its “How?” and “Why?”: Self-Destruction and Self-Destructive

Behaviors

“He was no good to anyone when he was on the town, especially to himself, and he

knew it and hated it and he took pleasure in pulling down the pillars of the temple. It was

a very good and strongly built temple and when it is constructed inside yourself it is not

so easy to pull down. But he did as good a job as he could.” This metaphor that Ernest

Hemingway used in his book Island in the Stream likens our psyches and personalities to

a temple. It is true that we shape and construct these like a temple, gradually and slowly;

and we cannot deny or ignore the external factors and conditions within the process. The

stronger the temple is, the more difficult it gets to harm or destroy them for the threats

from the outside. But, what about an internal threat? What if an individual gives harm to

her / his own psyche? Such an action is called “self-destruction” in psychology. Self-

destructive behaviors of an individual may be both conscious and/or unconscious, and

they are bond to have a crucial negative impact on the psyche. Whether unconscious or

not, self-destructive behaviors harm an individual's social life accordingly. Such

behaviors could be terminating relationships, refraining from feelings or isolating from

peers. As having already been referred to in the previous section, self-destruction is

linked to alienation. It could both be the reason and the result of alienation at the same

time. Self- destructive behaviors of an individual could pave the way of distancing from

others in both ways, which means that the distance could also be decided and determined

by others who are disturbed by such behaviors. And a state of alienation may be the
 46

starting point of one’s self-destruction, which I am going to conceptualize in the next

chapter.

In the psychoanalytical sense, unconscious self-destructive behaviors are more

relevant in terms of being the subject of question of this study. The term “death drive”

makes its appearance at this point. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud

conceptualizes it as “the opposition between the ego or death instincts and the sexual or

life instincts (Freud, 1957, p. 316).

Besides the id's inclination to meet the basic needs, the ego also strives for its own

survival. Although it is not a primitive and inborn part of the psyche, unlike the id, the

ego tends to ignore what it considers as moral or ethical when it is faced with a threat.

This is what stands in contrast with the self-destructive behaviors of the individual. So,

why? Why would a human being would have self-destructive tendencies? Brent Potter

raises the question “Why are humans, who are motivated by self-preservation, motivated

to engage in behaviors that threaten and even extinguish their existence?”, in his book

Elements of Self-Destruction, and then follows:

Self-destruction refers to the act or process of destroying oneself physically or

psychologically. Not surprisingly, self in its most ancient form means left to

oneself and it refers both to the sense of I that I am as well as to the overall

personality. Destruction in its essential meaning means a pulling down, to pull

down, to destroy (Webster’s, 1956) and metaphors associated with self-

destruction are of depth, going down, or, more accurately, being taken

down...The body of psychoanalytic literature is replete with research examining

the phenomenon of self-destructiveness. Much of this is owed to Freud’s

 47

seminal notion of the repetition compulsion, also called fate neurosis. The

repetition compulsion is the compulsion of individuals to repeat self-destructive

situations throughout the course of their lives, without realizing their

participation in creating such situations. Freud (1920) was so struck by the

power of the repetition compulsion that he published Beyond the Pleasure

Principle to emphasize that it is the most biologically primitive dynamic of the

psyche. The repetition compulsion is linked to the death instinct, the anti-life

inertia of an organism to return to the inorganic state of death. Freud asserted

that the repetition compulsion is more fundamental than masochism, as it is

uninfluenced by the pleasure-unpleasure principle (Potter, 2013, p. 2,5)

To take the subject one step further, probable outcomes of such self-traumatizing and

self-deteriorative attitudes could be concentrated on. According to Kernberg, eating

disorders, suicidal tendencies, addiction (drug, alcohol etc.), eating disorders and socially

awkward behaviors are observed as the most common results of self-destruction.

(Kernberg, 2004, p. 107).

Being a complicated and difficult issue, understanding and examining the human

psyche has long been quite a concern. As a sub-concept of that, the self-traumatizing act

of the psyche and the self-destructive behaviors led by this act has also been a broad

subject to focus on. For denying the situation is not a solution but it rather reinforces it,

acceptance should be the first step and handling the issue profoundly and detecting the

root of it should be the next.

 48

3.APPLICATION

In this chapter, I am going to focus on the subjects of the previous chapters in detail

while applying the theorization according to the purpose and the function of these

subjects. That’s to say, the main reason of the presence of the previous chapters are to

clarify the concepts and notions which are going to be dealt with in this chapter.

What is going to be the main concern of this study is the gradual self-destructive

behavior of Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye. This process is

caused by the isolation of his within his society, and even by his self-alienation. In this

sense, the reasons, present and probable outcomes of the process that he undergoes are

going to be highlighted. More importantly, what could be the cause of this process on an

unconscious level is going to be examined within a psychoanalytic perspective.

 49

3.1 An Anti-hero with a Red Hunting Hat: Holden Caulfield

Before calling Holden as an anti-hero, what puts him into this category should be

examined carefully. First, hero categorization of Northrop Frye consisting of five

different her types, already mentioned in the Introduction chapter, is going to be

examined in detail here:

Fictions, therefore, may be classified, not morally, but by the hero's power of

action, which may be greater than ours, less, or roughly the same. Thus:

4. If superior neither to other men nor to his environment, the hero is one of us:

we respond to a sense of his common humanity, and demand from the poet the

same canons of probability that we find in our own experience. This gives us the

hero of the low mimetic mode, of most comedy and of realistic fiction. "High"

and "low" have no connotations of comparative value, but are purely

diagrammatic, as they are when they refer to Biblical critics or Anglicans. On

this level the difficulty in retaining the word "hero," which has a more limited

meaning among the preceding modes, occasionally strikes an author. Thackeray

thus feels obliged to call Vanity Fair a novel without a hero” (Frye, 1957, 34).

So, where does Holden stand? In which category could we place him? Although

every reader’s point of view about a character would be different due to various

elements, it is not a subjective question that much; since that he has the features of the

“low mimetic hero” is quite apparent. Being a common man with flaws makes him one
 50

of us with whom we can identify ourselves. He has mishaps, emotional breakdowns and

disappointments as a human being.

“I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. If I’m on my way

to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I’m going,

I’m liable to say I’m going to the opera. It’s terrible. So when I told old Spencer

I had to go to the gym to get my equipment and stuff that was a sheer lie. I don’t

even keep my goddam equipment in the gym (Salinger, 1951, p. 17).

I stayed in the bathroom for about an hour, taking a bath and all. Then I got back

in bed. It took me quite a while to get to sleep —I wasn’t even tired— but

finally I did. What I really felt like, though, was committing suicide. I felt like

jumping out the window, I probably would’ve done it, too, if I’d been sure

somebody’d cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn’t want a bunch of stupid

rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory” (Salinger, 1951, p. 113).

These sentences are so expressionistic in terms of admittance. His implication of

being “different-from-everyone” and bohemian attitude are apparent, of course; but what

is beyond the apparent should be focused on and what is between the lines are supposed

to be read rather than the evident. It is quite interesting that even though his complaint

about himself and his self-criticism, when we pay attention to what really happens

instead of how he expresses them with his own sarcastic comments, the situation is not

that depressive or desperate. In other words, what makes Holden an anti-hero has

something to do with what he does to himself and how he sees himself rather than what

happens to him, what he faces with, and what his destiny grants him. His anti-heroic self-
 51

image gets shaped within the atmosphere that he creates for himself. When he triggers a

fight with Stradlater, who is a selfish and self-admiring boy with good-look, he already

knows that he is not capable of beating him:

“If I letcha up, will you keep your mouth shut?”

I didn’t even answer him.

He said it over again. “Holden. If I letcha up, willya keep your mouth shut?”

“Yes.”

He got up off me, and I got up too. My chest hurt like hell from his dirty knees.

“You’re a dirty stupid sonuvabitch of a moron,” I told him.

That got him really mad. He shook his big stupid finger in my face. “Holden,

God damn it, I’m warning you, now. For the last time. If you don’t keep your

yap shut, I’m gonna—“

“Why should I?” I said —I was practically yelling. “That’s just the trouble with

all you morons. You never want to discuss anything…” (Salinger, 1951, p. 47)

Before an anti-hero, as a character, Holden is a human being. His deficiencies and

psychological cracks make him different from a traditional hero. Contrary to a mythical

hero figure, Holden does not fight with giants, monsters or some creatures with super

powers. What he has to cope with are the society in which he lives, the pain of growing

and his very self.

Along with the features and points above, there are some others that make considering

Holden as an anti-hero possible. When the general atmosphere of the book is looked upon,

it could be seen that Holden reflects the effects of his society, and the social and political
 52

environment of his time. According to John Seelye, the novel “draws terrific power from

the emptiness of the forties.” Since those years can hardly be associated with something

outstanding and the fifties are the beginning of the time which was marked by Vietnam

War and Korean War, he says that Holden “stands at the exit point.” As a matter of fact,

the society which had to endure those wars was affected and Holden, as a part of that

society had his share of the situation, accordingly. He is a fictional character, of course, but

also is a character of a book whose setting is a real country existing in a real piece of time.

As mentioned above, he is an identifiable protagonist living a non-perfect and believable

life, therefore it is so normal and acceptable that he is depicted as an individual. He reflects

the effects of the current atmosphere of his time and space. John Seelye follows as “The

book is as much a war novel as is Moby Dick, despite the absence of an obvious target of

bomb-bursting hatred. It’s a wars story without a mad captain or a whale, but American

events soon caught up with the book and made good the deficiency sucking him out of his

dark December into the maelstrom.” Such effects do not reveal themselves on Holden

directly. We do not see an explicit reference to the devastating impacts of war, Holden

doesn’t say something negative about it, or we do not witness an event which is directly

linked to war or which is a direct consequence of it. We, as readers, only witness the

implicit effects of such a background and the current atmosphere on him. His being a quite

defiant against whatever trying to shape him or interfere with his manners. All kind of

regulations are on the same degree of absurdity and unnecessity, in his opinion. Since what

ignites the wick of wars is the decision of statesmen and governments, it is something

unacceptable for Holden. Besides this, all these concepts belong to the world of the adults

which he hates. That is, all these contribute to the development of his personality and he,
 53

as a protagonist and anti-hero, holds a mirror to the general aura of his time and the

environment in which he lives.

There is another important aspect of his being an anti-hero: His being not a villain. It

means that there is a distinct line between an anti-hero and a villain who is a total evil.

Holden has a pessimistic and dim side which make him an anti-hero, while his positive,

constructive and an affectionate side take him far away from being a villain: When he

talks about James Castle, the boy who was lying dead at the school yard, it could be

deeply sensed that he has pity on him and he respects Mr. Antolini mostly because he

covered the body of the poor boy… Or, when he sees the “fuck you” writing on the wall

of Phoebe’s school and he concerns on the possible reactions of children who see it on

the wall and how they could be affected by it…

Standing in contrast to a traditional hero figure, Holden does not commit socially

accepted things but his actions are to be criticized, condemned, disapproved or judged.

But, it is worth mentioning again that he does not do such things just to be a marginal or

an outcast. The very reason of these is that his norms and values do not correspond to

those of the society, which is also the reason why we consider him an anti-hero who is so

open to identification.
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3.2 The Relationship with the Family Members and the Effect of Them on Holden

Caulfield

We are all social beings as humans living in societies; and our social behaviors

reflect our personalities which begin to be shaped at the early stages of our lives. As the

first social environment of an individual, families have a great impact on the individual’s

self and psyche. For this very reason, I am going to focus on the members of Holden’s

family and their relationship with him. According to what they mean to him and how

they function for the establishment of his character, some of them deserve special

attention and concern. His three siblings have all different meanings for him and each

represents something. As for his parents, they are not that outstanding and involved

figures in his development as an adolescent.

Holden has a deep and intimate relationship with his sister, Phoebe who is a

sophisticated girl and more mature than her peers as a ten-year-old child. She is like the

symbol of the purity and innocence that he attributes to children and he wants to protect

them from the world of the adults who are nothing other than phonies, liars, hypocrites

and corrupted beings. He first starts describing Phoebe at page 72, by saying, “You

should see her. You never saw a little kid so pretty and smart in your whole life. She’s

really smart… I mean if you tell old Phoebe something, she knows exactly what the hell

you’re talking about… The only trouble is, she’s a little too affectionate sometimes.

She’s very emotional, for a child.”

She is the most reliable person in his life and he sometimes desperately needs her

advices, even though she is a few years younger than he is. Just like the children he wants
 55

to protect, he is also wary about his precious Phoebe for these reasons.

In his article, The Psychological Structure of The Catcher in the Rye, James Bryan

approaches to this relationship with a different point of view and says, “The

psychoanalytical axiom may here apply that a sister is often the first replacement of the

mother as love object, and that normal maturation guides the boy from sister to other

women. At this point in his life, Holden's sexuality is swaying precariously between

reversion and maturation.” Considering that he is neither an adult yet, nor a little kid

anymore. Holden stands at a crucial turning point from childhood to maturity, which we

call adolescence. At such a stage in life, he should normally be replacing those figures

with other females from outside, as Bryan suggests as well. He experiences some kind of

intimacy with girls and tries to make connections; in other words, he gets involved in

relationships with other female figures but we cannot regard them as a replacement.

Moreover, it would be inappropriate to name them as failures in replacing, since he does

not try to do so. He longs for intimacy and a healthy communication, but he keeps them

apart from what he has with Phoebe. When we look at his involvements with other girls

throughout the narrative, we cannot find a sign of appreciation, except for Jane Gallagher

who is another figure that he is trying to protect. The inadequacy of smart and adorable

female figures makes him stuck in his dependent relationship with Phoebe whose

opinions and advices are crucial for him even if he does not commit them in practice.

Contrary to the common “young boy with Oedipus complex” situation, Holden does not

strive for his mother’s approval, either. When Phoebe says “You don’t like anything

that’s happening,”, Holden objects to it by saying “Yes I do. Yes I do. Sure I do. Don’t

say that. Why the hell do you say that?” Because it makes him “even more depressed
 56

when she said that.” (Salinger, 1951, p. 182) Despite his objections, he inwardly knows

that she is right in her criticism and her disapproval has quite an impact on him. “I do!

That’s where you’re wrong —that’s exactly where you’re wrong! Why the hell do you

have to say that? I said. Boy, was she depressing me.” From this point on, a debate begins

between Holden and Phoebe about Holden’s not liking even one small thing in life.

Phoebe, as a figure who tells things that he avoids in his face, functions like his

conscience whose judgements are what he is trying to escape from. As for the main

reason why he puts his sister before his mother as a female figure to confide in or

counsel, it is clearly seen that mother belongs to the world he hates, too: the world full of

phonies —the world of adults. Now that what is right lies in what is innocent, he takes

Phoebe as the iconic symbol of fairness, righteousness and honesty, not her mother who

has been somehow corrupted upon entering that world.

Another phony —a word he uses total thirty-five times within the course of the

narrative— around him is his older brother D.B. —we do not know his full name. He

must be so phony that Holden begins his narrative by criticizing him and we get to know

who D.B. is and what he is doing while reading the very first page. He begins mentioning

his brother D.B. at the beginning of the book not because Holden likes him so much or he

has a distinct significance, but he is like a symbol for the phoniness that Holden detests.

It is as if he uses D.B. as a tool for the opening for his narrative and then he does not

mention that much, since he has lots of phonies at hand and D.B. is not that needed

anymore. Now that he has completed his missions in the beginning and is left to stay

quiet afterwards. “Now he’s out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute.” His choice of

the word here explains everything. What makes D.B. a “prostitute” is his wasting his
 57

talent and using art to have a place in the world of phonies, which simply kills Holden.

D.B. is not “the brother” for Holden, apparently since it is quite impossible for him

to compete with Allie, the youngest of the three brothers and who has died of leukemia.

Allie is a prominent figure both for Holden himself (and his psychic development) and

the course of the narrative, since the loss of his is a real trauma that Holden is never able

to cope with —and seems like he will never be. Such a traumatic loss could be the

beginning of his sense of loss and his yearning for protection of what he loves and finds

pure and innocent like Allie. He differs from Phoebe in this sense, because Allie is the

one whom he has not been able to “catch” and save from falling and Phoebe is the one

whom he is struggling to “catch”. But the situation is not the same as it seems to us. He

accepts that Allie’s gone and does not experience a delusion or something, but he is not

willing to simply let his memory fade away. It is as if Holden wants Allie to catch him

even if he has failed in doing so for him. “Every time I’d get to the end of a block I’d

make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I’d say to him, ‘Allie, don’t let me

disappear. Allie, don’t let me disappear. Please, Allie.’”

Death of Allie marks the beginning of bitter chain of events in Holden’s part of

life that we witness through the novel and it has a significant impact on his insecure

personality.

“…my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty

personal about them. They’re quite touchy anything like that, especially my father.

They’re nice and all —I’m not saying that —but they’re touchy as hell.”(1) It is quite

interesting that we do not see Holden describing or telling something about his parents;

except for the time when he says that, his mother could easily wake up when he is trying
 58

to sneak into Phoebe’s room. It is again interesting because they gain importance when

he is afraid that they would notice his presence at home or his being expelled from the

school. As a typical teenager, Holden fears from his parents’ reactions and it is normal for

most of the time. But is that all? Since he expresses in the first page that he is not going

to tell us his “whole goddam autobiography or anything” and adds: “I’ll just tell you

about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got

pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy.” And this statement could

bring along the rhetorical question that “Why should he describe them in detail or

mention them over and over now that he narrates a specific piece of time?” Well, when

we compare the times he refers to Allie —who is not even present in his life— and

Phoebe, the way he describes them to what he does with his parents in the same sense, it

gets quite apparent that they are not prominent figures as much as his two favorite

siblings.

In the previous chapter, I have already mentioned the role of the parents as self-

objects by quoting “When parents function as self-objects and consistently fail children,

children suffer from what amounts to faults and failings in their own self-maintaining and

restoring psychic structure (Tolpin, 1987, p. 233).”

Holden’s deprivation of a father figure who could function as an idolized male or a

mother to cling until the latency period of his childhood makes him wander outside in

search of adult figures to adopt as role models.

In Early Adolescence and Search for the Self, Douglas-Barbara Schave state that,

Parents, who continue to provide self-object functions on a more mature level as

the cognition and emotional levels of their children become more sophisticated,
 59

help consolidate a stronger sense of self and a stronger set of organizing

principles or the psychic structure. Unfortunately, some parents, who themselves

are struggling with issues of being afraid of the world, feeling out of control, or

lost, experience their children's need for self-differentiation with trepidation and

panic. However, the next time these problems arise is in early adolescence,

when issues of separation from the family are again intensified (Schave, 1989,

p. 66).

It would be quite an assertion to tell that Holden’s parents are struggling with their own

problems and their own lack of self-esteem or something, but their failure in functioning

as proper self-objects is apparent. Healthy development of the psyche needs self-objects,

and in Kohutian approach, we need external figures as “object of instincts”, which starts

at family. “For Kohut, what is essential is the very soothing quality of her actions.

(Schave, 33)” It brings along the question if Holden has ever experienced such a soothing

care. Melanie Klein’s theory of object relations steps in here —in order to highlight the

subject and find an appropriate answer— and shows us how a person’s general attitude,

manners, and relationships are shaped by family from early childhood.

By means of the growing adaptation to reality and the expanding range of object

relations, the infant becomes able to combat and diminish depressive anxieties

and in some measure to establish securely his good internalized objects, that is

to say the helpful and protective aspect of the super-ego… object relations start

almost at birth and arise with the first feeding experience; furthermore, that all

aspects of mental life are bound up with object relations. It also emerged that the
 60

child's experience of the external world, which very soon includes his

ambivalent relation to his father and to other members of his family, is

constantly influenced by—and in turn influences—the internal world he is

building up, and that external and internal situations are always interdependent

(Klein, 1988, p. 44, 191).

It is nearly impossible to comment on Holden’s parents; since, let alone being good

or bad, they are barely present within the narrative. Their physical absence does not

necessarily mean that they are not there and it is not nearly impossible to comment on

slight characters; but in Holden’s case, it is so. The reader does not have enough

background information about his childhood, the way he is raised and treated by his

parents. That is, we do not witness the process but the effects of it and make inferences,

accordingly. His parents’ lack of involvement as affectionate caregivers could be inferred

with regard to Holden’s behavior towards them, since he omits describing them in detail.

It lays bare the reason why he gives so limited place to them in his narrative, while he

spares paragraphs for Phoebe and Allie. Even D.B. is more frequently mentioned, the

main reason behind this is he belongs to the type of people that Holden cannot stand;

that’s to say, hatred, dislike, reprimand, or disgust are strong feelings which make a

person say lots of things. As for his parents, he does not have such strong feelings,

neither positive nor negative. Holden does not avoid talking about his parents but he

simply ignores their presence until they become a threat when he wants to see Phoebe or

leave school. He has already unconsciously lost his hope to adopt them as role models

somewhere in his childhood. Moreover, Holden’s attachment to his mother could be

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traced to this early childhood problem. He constantly acts out in a way that he is almost

petrified when it comes to taking an active part in a social environment, but at the same

time he craves for the approval and intimacy of some people around. His calling girls on

the phone and quickly regretting doing so, his fear of being rejected and so on could be

linked to the insecure attachment pattern which has been developed between him and his

mother.

All these figures in his family have different roles and meanings for Holden and

each of them put a brick in the wall he is trying to build, which is his personality and self.
 62

3.3 Holden and His Social Environment

As an adolescent boy who constantly criticizes, judges, gets mad, both avoids and

longs for connection paradoxically, Holden behaves socially awkward many times. This

kind of state of being effects his social relationships, while it is also a result of those

relationships, which creates a kind of vicious circle in terms of his social development.

That is, the more he acts awkwardly, the more damaging responses he gets and this

situation gets to have an impact on his psyche gradually.

There are two teacher figures that Holden gets in touch with, each having different

functions in terms of their roles and meanings to him. Mr. Spencer is the first person to

whom Holden talks within the narrative. He is neither a role model nor a person to

admire, but one of the phonies around, for Holden. When Spencer tells him that his

parents are “grand people”, Holden seemingly agrees with him but he thinks, “It’s a

phony” (Salinger, 1951, p. 10). That’s to say, the first conversation of the book starts with

a dramatic one in terms of the possible expectation of an average reader. As an old and

experienced teacher, Mr. Spencer could easily be an esteemed idol of another protagonist

in a different book; but he greets us as one of Holden’s “phonies”. This kind of situation

is enough to make the reader wonder: Even if his knowledgeable teacher does not gain

his admiral or approval, then who does? What kind of a state of mind is Holden in? Does

he really contemplate on this matter before he decides whether a person is phony or has

he got automatic in this respect? If so, what is the reason behind?

To answer these questions as much as possible —since it is not that a complicated but a

relative issue, the other characters around him who somehow have an effect should be
 63

reviewed.

It is worth paying attention that Holden keeps himself away from Stradlater and

Ackley, his roommates, with the same distance. Two contrasting stereotypes of their kind

—the former and cool one has an adorable body, energetic style and girls around him,

and the latter is fat, lazy, clumsy and has pimples on his face, these boys are Holden’s

roommates that he is not crazy for the idea of sharing a common space with them. Ackley

“always brought out the old sadist” in him (Salinger, 1951, p. 23) and Stradlater “was

madly in love with himself” (Salinger, 1951, p. 28). Even though the exclusion of

Ackley by others makes Holden feel for him, he does not like Ackley at all but it helps us

to see the piece of affection inside of Holden, in this respect. As for Stradlater, the case is

quite different. Not having an intimate relationship with a girl, Holden is jealous of

Stradlater and he is surprised by the idea of girls’ falling for such a rude and selfish boy.

His hatred for Stradlater reaches its peak when he learns that Stradlater dates Jane

Gallagher, the only girl Holden has ever been into and he really admires. Another symbol

of purity and innocence, Jane is a figure he really cares about; and Holden cannot stand

the idea of her dating Stradlater. In other words, he cannot stand the idea of some other

mean boy’s touching his sacred sanctuary.

In his article, Journal of Homosexuality, Michael Ferguson handles this subject by

giving reference to the concept of “special type of object choice made by men” by Freud

(Ferguson, 815). According to this, it is an oedipal struggle for a man to save the woman

(representing the mother) who is sexually possessed by another man (representing the

father). But it is not just an oedipal desire but also a narcissistic one which would give

the pleasure of gaining a victory when/if he gains the woman in the end. Holden’s desire
 64

to rescue Jane from Stradlater suits this kind of an unconscious fantasy of rescuing an

innocent and sacred female figure.

Holden’s problem with Stradlater is not just the case of Jane, but also that of his deceased

brother, Allie. Holden gets mad when Stradlater belittles Holden’s composition about

Allie’s baseball mitts, which Holden writes not for himself but Stradlater upon his

request. Allie is another innocent and sacred figure that Holden constantly

commemorates and he does not want anybody to touch or disrespect his memory, as well.

His fight with upon these events coincides with the breakpoint within the narrative where

Holden leaves school and begins his three-day-long quest during the Christmas.

In The Risk of Reading, Robert P. Waxler summarizes the situation of Holden with

such figures and says,

It is not so much that Holden fears sexuality, or more generally the rhythm of

human experience, but that he is desperate to find an alternative to “the sexy

bastards” (32) (like Stradlater) and the noisy bastards (like Ackley) or even the

lecturing bastards (like old Spencer) who seem to believe that you can grasp

what you cannot grasp, the uniqueness and integrity of the individual self, the

unique voice saying more than what is said… The isolated episodes of his “real

life,” governed as they often are by consumer culture and the recent world war

may haunt Holden, frustrate him, sadden and depress him; just as sexual

difference and its aggressive counterpart do… (Waxler, 2014, p. 102)

His lack of alternatives could be one of the determining elements in the development

of his social manners and style, since Holden constantly yearns for communication but
 65

fails in finding an appropriate figure to actualize that, which is a case I am going to focus

on later.

So close to being an esteemed character for Holden to count on, his teacher Mr. Antolini

turns out to be a disappointment, as far as Holden reflects to his readers/listeners. It could

simply be considered as a need for a human being to have such an image in social world.

According to Heinz Kohut, “even the genius chooses a person in his environment whom

he can see as powerful, as a figure with whom he can temporarily blend (Kohut, 1971, p.

36).” But, why does Mr. Antolini turn out to be a disappointment while he could be

Holden’s “catcher”? Or could we expect from Holden to stay in city instead of deciding

to going away if it has not been the case with Mr. Antolini —since it coincides with the

time after his visit to Mr. Antolini?

After the climatic point when Mr. Antolini pats Holden’s had while he is sleeping and

waking Holden up with surprise and frustration, Holden contemplates on this issue for a

while before leaving it unresolved. While Holden is sleeping at Mr. Antolini’s home, he

is waken up accidentally and sees Mr. Antolini patting his head. The reason why Holden

gets so angry is that the scene he exposes makes a homosexual connotation to him, which

is something Holden avoids verbalizing and even confessing to himself, as well. Since

our knowledge, as readers, is limited with what Holden gives us, we are able to make

comment and inference with just that material. In other words, we have no other choice

other than accepting what Holden tells us and handling the case relying on his comments.

Holden tries to place it on a reasonable ground and contemplates on this issue to justify

his act, which shows that maybe he does not choose the short circuit and simply prefer

being an outcast.
 66

Being large and small figures, all these characters pave the way for Holden’s

temperament, manners, personality and his self-image, along with his family.
 67

3.4 Holden’s Self-Image and Unconscious Fantasy Issues

As I summarized in the previous chapter, Masterson theorizes that human beings

could possess real and false selves and the real self consists of self-images (Masterson,

1988, p. 25). Self-image is the viewpoint of ours about ourselves as the result of our

interaction with others. In other words, it is how we see ourselves and our perception

about our personalities. According to Carl Rogers, self-image is one of the elements that

comprise the self and, the other elements are ideal self and self-esteem; and it is one of

the themes that must be examined within the study of the psychology of the self. As

mentioned in the previous chapter, apart from the self-image, there is unconscious self-

image of an individual. Unconscious self-image could be described as the way of

unconscious mind’s seeing itself.. The effect of one’s unconscious is more than on the

unconscious self-image when compared to the self-image which is mostly affected by

others. Holland says that, the aim of psychoanalytic reading is to detect the core fantasy

of the narrative (Holland, 1968, p. 224). As for Holden, the metaphor of being a catcher

in the rye represents his unconscious fantasies and he is swayed by them consciously as a

way of escape from reality.

Holden conceptualizes being a catcher in the rye as a metaphor to represent his

narcissistic fantasies and illusions of belonging to the “good” side. By saving children

from growing up, he would be able to save them from the “bad” one. As a defense,

Holden acts like a person having no bit of emotion sometimes, especially when it comes

to an intercourse with an adult. Only at the times when a child and their feelings are the

point of question he seems concerned — his insistence on questioning the child-like

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prostitute’s age, his sensitivity with the dead schoolboy, the inappropriate wall writings

that could affect children’s development. To his defense, Holden prefers to seem like a

cold stone most of the time. His need for approval and love is veiled this way, and all his

accusations towards all adults is a reflection of this need. Being the only emotion that is

reflected, his anger is his shield to protect his low self-confidence to be unmasked. In

order not to get hurt, Holden simply prefers to act like having almost no feelings. His

constant criticism and complaints about the adult world from which he tries to escape are

a way of asserting himself and proving himself. This kind of behavior is the mask of his

need for approval and lack of enough self-confidence.

An unconscious fantasy manifests the form and the nature of the conflicts that

shape an individual’s life. They represent the individual’s object relations and unfulfilled

fantasies; and in this sense, they remain the same during a lifetime.

Holden’s unconscious mind goes hand in hand with the products of his primary

process thinking8 naturally and his unconscious fantasies that are metaphorically

represented are affected by the narcissistic fusion.9 In his book Metafor ve Şiir Dilinin

Yapısal Özellikleri, Oğuz Cebeci says that when the primary process thinking is

activated, it helps escape from the tension of the real life (Cebeci, 2013, p. 312) Holden’s

escape is something dominant within the whole narrative —escape from his peers,

school, adulthood etc. — and this escape from unacceptable reality, to grow and to be

forgotten in the end is the main issue that Holden tries to deal with.

8
“In psychoanalytic theory, primitive thought processes deriving from the id and marked by illogical form,
preverbal content, an emphasis on immediate wish fulfillment, and an equating of thought and action. Such
processes are characteristic of childhood and of dreams.” (http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com)
9
Narcissistic fusion is the fusion between the self and an external object, e.g. the symbiosis between the
mother and child. (Lopez-Corvo, Rafael E. Traumatised and Non-Traumatised States of the Personality: A
Clinical Understanding Using Bions Approach. N.p.: Karnac , 2014.)
 69

Holden’s experience gains meaning as soon as he begins his narrative. And

meaning, says Holland, is an implicit or dignified version of the unconscious fantasy. The

reason why meaning is needed is that it helps the unconscious fantasy to be expressed

and, thus it provides a sense of delight. It is clear that Holden wants to be understood and

approved by his imaginary audience. His desire to put his quest on a solid ground or to

justify it by giving it a meaning is the means by which he projects his unconscious

fantasies within the narrative.

As for the imaginary audience, it is possible to broaden the subject and assume that

Holden may consider himself as his only reader from time to time. This could lead us the

concept of closet narcissism which could be identified with Holden’s unconscious self-

image. As mentioned before, narcissism is the fusion between the self and the object.

Unlike narcissism in which the idealization of the grandiose self is actualized through

relation to the objects and one-mindedness, in closet narcissism, one “idealizes others

still seeking ‘one-mindedness,’ But in this case by "basking in the glow" of the idealized

object. This idealization of the other in the service of the grandiose self is characteristic

of the patient with a closet narcissistic disorder of the self (Klein, 1975, p. 15)

In Holden’s case, it is quite clear that Phoebe takes on the role of being his “other” to

actualize the idealization. His escape from reality and search for a shelter to protect him

from the phoniness of the adult world are linked with his search for meaning for his

quest; and Phoebe becomes his very shelter and the means for idealization —except for

the times when she has to share this position with Allie.

If we are to go back to the issue of Holden’s conscious self-image, it could be said

that apart from Phoebe, the role of the others are quite important. Since Holden does not
 70

put his trust on others’ views, his perception of himself shaped with the help of others’

remarks, responses, behaviors, etc. are not that much steady and strong. It is interesting

that while Holden finds others phony and insincere, he does not assert that he, himself is

vice versa. But he has reasons for himself to justify his manners, at least he just “feels

like” doing something when he does something, since feeling is important for him.

Holden is hard to please, choosy and critical, and has an unbalanced manner with

other people’s feelings, state of minds and hardships they encounter in general.

Sometimes he grasps a little hope for the restoration of humanity in little things, which

sparks a light of hope inside of us for his happy ending. The matter is that Holden just

does not know what a happy ending is or what he expects from his journey. All the

people he encounters within this process contribute to both his understanding and

confusion at the same time, which impacts his self-image in a way. This is because

however indifferent he tries to behave, Holden is deeply affected by how people treat him

and how they react. His longing for a healthy communication and failure in doing so is

the core reason of his isolation, which is a subject I am going to handle in detail while I

am focusing on his alienation.

As for Holden’s unconscious self-image, it is hard to conclude it with a concrete and

certain image due to his imbalanced behaviors and instances of acting out which are to be

the proof of this unconscious figure. As mentioned before, Holden’s narcissistic

tendencies, which are actually the reflection of the attempts of veiling his sense of

inferiority are related to and affected by his unconscious self-image. “In both genders,

“narcissistic personalities frequently have the unconscious fantasy of being both genders

at the same time, thus denying the need to envy the other gender,” says Kernberg and
 71

continues,

This fantasy fosters the search for sexual partners along various routes. Some

male narcissistic patients search for women who unconsciously represent

mirror images of themselves, “heterosexual twins,” thus completing

themselves unconsciously with the genitals and the corresponding

psychological implications of the other gender without having to accept the

reality of another, different, autonomous person…This can be destructive,

since it carries a severe sexual inhibition (Kernberg, 1995, p. 153).

Thus, Holden’s denial of growing up leads us to picture a figure whose sexual

properties and core gender role are implicit and unclear which represents a fantasy taking

place on the unconscious level. This image having no proper gender consciously desires

to be a figure whose only function is to catch children and prevent them from falling

from the cliff; however, this wish for releasing from the attributions of a specific gender

is shaped within the unconscious. Attempting to form a relationship and sabotaging it

himself when he sees a sparkle, Holden defends himself against the need of the

attachment to the opposite sex. These repetitive patterns of his acting out are the results

of his unconscious fantasies and the defenses against them. His withdrawal interpersonal

strategy sabotages his relationships especially the ones that he could barely form with the

opposite sex. Even with his “heterosexual twin” Jane Gallagher, he cannot go beyond

being a savior. Rather than striving for making himself a desirable partner for her, Holden

simply wants her not to be with Stradlater and tries to dissuade Stradlater from dating her

for the sake of saving Jane from a toxic relationship with a guy who is not suitable for
 72

her. The problem here is that Holden does not see himself as a suitable for her, either. His

defense against attachment to the opposite sex and objecting to grow up which means

possessing a sexual identity reveals the underlying unconscious desire of denying the

possession of one specific gender role and properties. Besides, his behaviors, which are

ambivalent and ambiguous, are generally shaped by this, and stuck between longing for

interaction and escaping when left unsatisfied.

From this point of view, his ambivalent behaviors and denial reflected by acting out

gain meaning which are forms of defense and way of transformation of fantasy,

according to Holland who concludes that, this transformation of fantasy is,

at the core of a literary work into terms satisfactory to an adult ego…the

unconscious fantasy at the core of a work will combine elements that could,

if provided full expression give us pleasure…The literary work, through what

we have loosely termed “form,” acts out defensive maneuvers for us:

splitting, isolating, undoing, displacing from, omitting (repressing or

denying) elements of the fantasy. Meaning, whether we find it or supply it,

acts more like a sublimation: giving the fantasy material a disguised

expression which is acceptable to the ego, which “makes sense” (Holland,

1968, p. 182, 189)

Both unconscious and conscious self-images could be far from being realistic to have

a decent and satisfying social life, but Holden does not seem to face some things that he

must accept and admit. In The Search for the Selfhood in Modern Literature, Murray

Roston quotes from Christopher Parker, and states that “Holden has no real ideas of his
 73

own to substitute for the false values of society against which he railed and charged him

with being guilty of the very phoniness he condemned (Roston, 2001, p. 108).”

Holden’s seeing himself as “quite sarcastic” (Salinger, 1951, p. 22) or “a madman”

(Salinger, 1951, p. 145) are not placed on a solid basis due to this ambivalence and

doomed to be temporary. Another important reason behind is that his being an adolescent

who is trying to shape his character and mood swings most of the time. We cannot simply

say that he is incoherent with his values or goals, but instant changes of state of mind

could make him behave just the opposite of what he thinks or believes. In other words, he

does not change his general perception but somewhere inside he is also aware of the fact

that he has almost nothing to do with the society and is not able to change or modify it.

Seeing that and having no hope, Holden seems busy with the process he undergoes. His

journey is of great significance for just its own sake. That is to say, Holden has no desire

of changing or maturing during this quest just because maturation means being phony

and he is deeply afraid of becoming like others. Not being content with what he is or

where he is, even so, Holden prefers being himself to being the way the phonies are.

Holden’s self-image also seems stuck between his realistic but hopeless viewpoint of

his own and his fantasy of being a catcher which sometimes causes him to detach from

reality.

“Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around —nobody big, I mean— except

me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch

everybody if they start to go over the cliff…That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the

catcher in the rye and all. (Salinger, 1951, p. 186)”

His fantasy of being a catcher and his desire of describing himself as a catcher in the rye
 74

hints that he is not pleased with the world, and his place on it, and all that “madman

stuff.” In other words, his becoming a catcher in the rye would save the children from the

horrible adult world that is awaiting them, but more importantly, on the unconscious level

its main function would be making his presence meaningful.

In a world full of fakers, phonies, liars etc., Holden unconsciously finds pieces of

those in himself and is able to find no alternative but picturing himself consciously as the

savior of little kids to soothe this bitter feeling. Being scared of facing that he is an

ordinary human being and will grow up as the result of the normal process, Holden fears

being one of them and being forgotten ultimately. This fear makes him having fantasies

instead of taking action due to his desperate state of mind and hopelessness.
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3.4 Defense Mechanisms of Holden Caulfield

Defense mechanisms are natural parts of human behavior in social life, as we are

emotional beings with fragile and vulnerable sides. As a human being, Holden character

has his own flaws, positive and negative sides, emotions, fears, loved and disliked ones

around in his social atmosphere, thus it is no surprise that he has developed some sort of

defense mechanisms in this sense.

The most outstanding defense mechanism of Holden Caulfield is the splitting of the

objects in his mind. As I have stated in the previous chapter, splitting of the objects are

divided into two sections which are good objects of affection and bad objects of hostility,

according to Freud. In Holden’s case, it is quite apparent that the good objects of

affection are all the children in the world that he wants to rescue from becoming adults

and the bad objects of hostility are those adults who are nothing but pretentious phonies.

Holden transforms the poem by Robert Burns, which actually is “If a body meet a

body coming through the rye” into “If a body catch a body…” and he does it

unconsciously, since he does not know that until Phoebe corrects him. The desire of

catching the children before they fall from the edge of the cliff demonstrates his wish for

preventing them from crossing the line between the split parts, which are adulthood and

childhood. It is not a coincidence that his most beloved ones, Allie and Phoebe belong to

the latter and almost all the rest of the characters to the former one. Knowing that he

cannot remain as a child forever and abstain from growing up, Holden tries to find a

soothing effect in his fantasy of being a catcher to veil the harsh reality. In fact, the

reality is not the same as Holden dramatizes. In other words, neither the world of adults
 76

is nothing but a dirty, repulsive or horrible place, nor that of the children are full of joy,

happiness and peace. These two worlds have such contrasting images in his mind just

because he wants to perceive them that way as an escape from his problems which he

avoids trying to solve. While he usually criticizes, and condemns others, he has no holy

purposes or values of his own. It is quite clear that Holden is not a man of action —not in

terms of physical action regarding that he is usually “on the road”10, but rather in terms of

taking action to handle problems and his life in general. For this reason, it would be

meaningless to expect from hopeless Holden to do something; thus, this situation brings

him to the point where he accepts that he cannot go back or cannot stop moving forward

in terms of maturation and just fantasizes to feel better.

Another type of splitting is the splitting of the self, which could also be seen in

Holden. According to Heinz Kohut, in someone whose sense of self is split into an

empty/inferior self and a grandiose/superior self (Kohut, 1971, p. 77). His imbalanced

and inconsistent behaviors and remarks about himself are the reflection of the split in his

self.

When he is with a prostitute, he does not commit anything sexual but tries to get to

know her and asks her name (Salinger, 1951, p. 106). Doing such a thing makes him

think that he lacks something or he is insecure, instead of realizing the spark of affection,

humanity, grace and decency. This kind of inferior image of his own is not prevalent

within the whole narrative, though. When he runs into one of his schoolmates’ mother on

the train and talks to her by filling the conversation full of lies and made-up stories,

Holden does not feel any regret or remorse, he gets proud, instead. He does this

10
On the Road, is also the name of the novel by Jack Kerouac (1957) which is a representative of Beat
generation and takes place in the same period with that of The Catcher in the Rye.
 77

unconsciously in a way just because he believes that a phony adult deserves all this

sarcasm “and stuff” (Salinger, 1951, p. 60, 61).

Regression is also a defense mechanism that Holden resorts to. It is no wonder that a

boy who detests the idea of becoming a grown-up having responsibilities and difficult

tasks longs for returning to his childhood. Besides the idea that childhood is like a land

which is covered by flowers and has evergreen trees, his own childhood is dreamy for

Holden, as well. Commemorating the old days with craving especially when not content

with the present time sounds typical, but for Holden’s case is a bit different. His

childhood memories are full of those of Allie’s and he has been alive, then. Assuming

that Allie’s death is the only traumatic event in his life —we cannot know but assume,

because our knowledge is limited with what Holden narrates and he does not mention

any other grief or important, negative event like this, his childhood is the time before this

loss. This fact is enough to make those years mostly missed and yearned alone,

understanding how much he misses Allie and how many meanings he attributes to him.

Regression is a kind of defense mechanism that seen under a lot of stress and

pressure, and lays bare itself with behaviors of a child. However indifferent and reckless

Holden seems to be most of the time, he wants approval and needs it. That is why he gets

depressive when he is rejected or somebody says bitter things about him. In other words,

he cares more than he reflects outside. Such a need for approval and desire of being

accepted but failing creates pressure inwardly. He cries after his fight with Stradlater,

yells in the school corridor like a naughty child (56), and says, “I don’t know why.” He

usually does not know why —as far as he asserts— when he does such meaningless and

childish things, but the main reason is always the stress in the background, which is
 78

caused by the unresolved issues of approval.

As for projection and projective identification, they are other defenses that Holden uses

sometimes, as well. Holden’s projection is again a result of his exaggeration of the

concept of phoniness. In other words, he projects his unresolved issues and unwanted

desires to others when he cannot find another alternative.

When Mr. Spencer asks him if he felt absolutely no concern for his future (Salinger,

1951, p. 15), Holden finds it depressing, hates it and leaves there. Because he cannot “sit

there another ten minutes” to save his life. In his opinion, Mr. Spencer’s care and

attention is phony and it is nonsense to try to solve that problem in such a limited time.

The thing is that Holden does not leave there for this reason but he escapes from facing

the idea that he does not feel any concern for his future. It is much easier for him to get

mad at Mr. Spencer and project all the negativity created by the atmosphere onto him

than facing the reality and taking responsibility. What Mr. Spencer tries to do is not

solving that problem in ten minutes but to open Holden’s horizon up to make him do

something about it in general. His lack of motivation and vision are the main reason of

his insecurity and this situation leads him tell lies about himself and his experience.

When does such things, he gets relieved in a way by making himself believe that there is

nothing wrong with telling a lie to a phony who does not deserve more than that.

It is also important that Holden shows clinging behavior towards his sister Phoebe,

not towards his mother at all, which is common. It is because he does not have such a

relationship with his mother and has never had. Let alone clinging to the mother, he

abstains from a probable communication with her since he does not put her in a place

different from the other adults.

 79

The Kleinian concept, projective identification is the last defense mechanism which I

am going to examine on Holden. It is an unconscious phantasy —not fantasy, since Klein

uses this term different from fantasy— which is in contrast with projection. In projective

identification, the desired identification with an admired figure is on the table. The wish

for becoming like an external object is the main driving force behind this mechanism.

This object of choice is undoubtedly Phoebe for Holden, since she is the symbol of

innocence and purity which are attributed to childhood.

Melanie Klein says that,

The identification based on this type of projection again vitally influences

object-relations. The projection of good feelings and good parts of the self into

the mother is essential for the infant's ability to develop good object-relations

and to integrate his ego. However, if this projective process is carried out

excessively, good parts of the personality are felt to be lost, and in this way the

mother becomes the ego-ideal (Klein, Salinger, 1951, p. 8).

As I have stated before, Holden lacks such a relationship with his parents in terms of

object relations. This kind of a gap leads him to cling Phoebe, project good feelings to

her, and not the mother but the caring and affectionate sister becomes his ego ideal.

Despite being younger sister, Phoebe functions as a mother figure for Holden sometimes.

She scolds him, warns him, gives advices to him and what he say is of great importance

for him. “How come you’re not home Wednesday? You didn’t get kicked out or

anything, did you?” (Salinger, 1951, p. 177) “I suppose you failed in every single subject

again” (Salinger, 1951, p. 180) “Don’t swear so much.”( Salinger, 1951, p. 181) The tone
 80

of hers and the attitude she adopts are not quite the way a little sister —especially a ten-

year-old one— normally has, but Phoebe’s role is different in this sense. She takes up the

role of a mother for Holden in a way and his projective identification is actualized not

with the mother but with her in this sense.

When all the mechanisms of defense that are active in Holden’s self are looked upon,

it is clearly seen that they have one point in common, which is his obsession with

phoniness. In other words, Holden’s defense mechanisms circle around phoniness and his

hatred towards this concept. He has no alternative but growing up, does not take any

action to change something due to his hopeless point of view, and lacks of proper

communication. Thus, it creates the need of blaming something to relieve his conscience,

thus he sticks to the idea of others’ being phony and his keeping away from them

intentionally.
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3.5 A Boy with an Imaginary Audience as an Imaginary Friend & His Schoolboy

Jargon

As the narrative of the book consists of the very sentences of the first-person

narrator, the language and the way Holden expresses his thoughts, feelings or the events

that take place are significant.

In this sense, Lacan’s “The unconscious is structured like a language” theory flashes our

minds in terms of the psychoanalytic extent of the subject. Since the unconscious strives

to manifest itself in a way, words become one of the tools which it uses within this

purpose. At this point, in Lacan’s words, our “symbolic universe” embraces what are

spilled from our unconscious thoughts. In short, language is a structure whose main

purpose is to communicate to convey something and the meaning cannot be dealt with

separate from the unconscious.

When we consider that language is a structure shaped and transformed within a very

long period as a kind of tradition, the concept of collective unconscious takes its part

again. Post-structuralist, French philosopher Jacques Derrida asserts that language is

structured on the hierarchical relationship between the binary oppositions. That’s to say,

the unconscious persuasion of the superiority of the one side of the binary oppositions

destroys the probability of language’s being innocent and our word choices are thus not

arbitrary. Our unconscious decides in a way what we mean and how the addressed person

perceives it.

As for the language that Holden uses, the first noticed aspect of it is its typical

teenager way of talking. Without a disciplined style and a distorted grammatical usage,
 82

Holden does not concern the chronological order. His random choice of time and setting

to narrate draws a parallelism between his language and his wanderings which are

spontaneous and random, as well.

As I have mentioned before, the driving force behind what Holden does including his

behavior, his ideas, his aspirations and his quest etc. is adolescence. Its reflection on his

language manifests itself as a narrative looking like a verbal speech rather than a written

expression. In The Risk of Reading, Robert Waxler states that Holden’s story is “a

linguistic narrative with minimal concern about their linear progression, but rather a

looping narrative, moving back and forth, a repetitive movement shaping experience

through language (Waxler, 2014, p. 98).” His shaping experience through language is

important to some extent since Holden deeply concerns about his experience. “A lot of

people, especially this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I’m

going to apply myself if I’m going to apply myself when I go back to school next

September. It’s such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean how do you know what

you’re going to do till you do it.” (Salinger, 1951, p. 230) Even though he finds it stupid

to have an assumption about future events —he expresses that on the very last page of

the book, as a kind of conclusive statement, Holden’s main concern is not gaining an idea

about something when he has done it, but rather the process he experiences until he does

this thing. “I don’t even know what I was running for —I guess I just felt like it.”

(Salinger, 1951, p. 5) Even though he just runs across Route 204, this quote has a more

abstract connotation about a teenager who is lost within the course of time and hopeless

in his ideals. He does not contemplate, meditate or speculate, but he just guesses as a

desperate boy who always feels like “disappearing every time” (Salinger, 1951, p. 5)
 83

when crossing a road. And it is the same boy responds Mr. Spencer’s “Do you feel

absolutely no concern for your future, boy?” question after thinking just “for a minute”

and says “Not too much. I guess.” (Salinger, 1951, p. 15)

In The Analysis of the Self, Heinz Kohut concerns on the concept of imaginary

playmate of a child. The child makes this imaginary friend “the central focus of her / his

preoccupations” and turns from “emotionally meaningful wishes to dry and detached

intellectual pursuits (Kohut, 1971, p. 196)”.

As for the case of Holden Caulfield, we do not encounter an imaginary friend

while following the narrative but witness that he addresses to a mysterious listener and

constantly says “you”. We, as his imaginary audience, are the only ones that he counts on

after Phoebe and Allie, in a world whose phonies he hates. According to Matthew Sharpe,

“Lacan defines speech as a process in which the subjects get their meanings back from

the Other in an inverted form. The subject, by speaking, addresses himself to some Other

supposed to know her / his truth, and at the end of this process, the signifiers he offers to

the Other are quilted, and return to him "in an inverted form.” Without reckoning with

such an inversion, Holden strongly connects with his Other and projects the aspects

which he thinks the phonies lack. Sharpe follows as, “Lacan's idea is that to speak is to

presuppose…the true meaning of what I wish to convey always will emerge, and be

registered in some "Other" place… The big Other is the place, tribunal, collective or

single person which we presuppose will register the truth of what we say, whenever we

speak.”

Holden, who does not only want to be listened but also be taken seriously and

approved, counts on his big Other in terms of registering the truth.

 84

3.6 An Anti-Hero in the Middle of Isolation

“Whatever one does, one is always a bit more alienated, whether in economics,

politics, psycho-pathology, aesthetics, and so on (Lacan, 1977, p. 210)” are the words

with which Jacques Lacan starts conceptualizing the term alienation in his book, The

Four Fundemental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. This implication of inevitability of

alienation and the fact that it gradually becomes an ordinary and internalized part of our

lives correspond to the assertion of Robert David Laing. The inevitability of alienation,

as he states, awaits us. Besides this imminence of alienation in some period of our lives,

Laing theorizes that there are two distinct types of isolation which are: 1. the inclination

of being distant to others, 2. the inclination of expressing unusual anxious behaviors

when interacting with people.

Based on these modes of alienation put forward by Laing, it is possible to look into

the situation of Holden in terms of his relationship with others.

Holden shows both of these two as a typical, insecure adolescent whose behaviors and

reactions are not coherent or balanced. The very reason of his tendency to withdraw from

people is that his degraded opinion about them, as I have stated before. His perception of

the people around him and others in general are so fixated that he is desperate in terms of

establishing a healthy relationship with them. It is important at this point that, however

prejudiced he is, Holden generally keeps himself distant from people not because he does

not want to, but because he does not have a hope in this sense. During his journey, he

encounters many people and we do not witness not only his withdrawal but the attempts

of communication, as well. Moreover, he does not only encounters, but also tries to
 85

create an opportunity to see some of them by arranging appointments or to hear from

them by “giving a buzz.”

“The first thing I did when I got off at Penn Station, I went into this phone booth.

I felt like giving somebody a buzz.” (Salinger, 1951, p. 64)

Why does he desire to talk to someone just upon getting off the train at the onset of his

three-day-long quest which starts after leaving school? Holden, who is not already

content with the atmosphere and all, decides to leave the school after having a fight with

his roommate, Stradlater. Not being able to find a proper explanation, he decides not to

tell the situation to his parents and begins wandering. Despite all his prejudice and

dislike, he still yearns for interaction and intimacy and seeks for a company at times.

Such a desire at the beginning of the journey gives us some clues about the process of

Holden’s isolation within the society and forces us to think that it is not his choice to be

distant but his experience with people has gradually caused him to be so.

Holden and his ambivalence in terms of communication corresponds to this

theorization and his desolation grows step by step. Apart from trying to form

relationships which would satisfy him, Holden needs approval and cares what other

people think, however much he tries to seem the opposite. Within the course of the

narrative, Holden adopts a critical, judgmental and an underestimating way of talking and

seems as if it was his preference to be distant. Yet, the events he narrates and his

experiences with people are enough to prove him wrong and Holden’s narrative gives

himself away. As I have stated before, he has a firm reliance on his audience and he does

not hesitate to tell whatever he undergoes. Such an openness and frankness make him

narrate even his bad memories and bitter events, and he lays bare what is really going on,
 86

without being aware of it.

What is more significant than his isolation within the society that he belongs to is his

alienation to his very self. In Erich Fromm’s words, “the alienated person is out of touch

with himself as he is out of touch with any other person. (Fromm, 98)" Self-alienation is

a more dangerous form of alienation in terms of one’s loses the very control and

dominance over her / his very own life, since a person who is estranged to his own self

lacks the awareness which is necessary to know what she/he desires, aspires or wishes.

Holden’s gradual estrangement is partly because of an introspection whose result is

nothing other than being lost within dilemmas and confusions in view of concerns of

future and aspirations. “Life determined by others loses autonomy,” says Vollmerhausen.

Where Holden’s life begins to lose autonomy is not a clear-cut issue and it cannot make a

reference to a specific point at time as a response to this question. What matters for

Holden and for the book in general, is Holden’s experience and it is a subject of process,

as well. His alienated self gets shaped during this process and his personality’s

development gets a part of it, parallel with its gradual destruction, which is the subject of

the next section.

When he is on a date with Sally Hayes, a girl he does not like that much but

spends time with just not to be alone, Holden refuses her invitation to ice-skating. Why

should he do this, now that he does not prefer being alone that night? It is again his

insecurity and sense of being uncomfortable when people are around. Holden’s

ambivalence manifests itself on a page where he uses the word “phony” four times, in the

meantime he tries to get closer to a girl from whom he would want to keep away a few

minutes later. This kind of conflict is not as simple as he is capable of coping with by
 87

introspection or spending more time thinking about both himself and his relationship

with others. Paradoxically, this conflict, thus, leads him to get “out of touch with himself”

in practice while he is trying to get closer to his very own self.

Holden and his ambivalence in his social life create an isolated space for him

together and he keeps on moving back and forth on this social path. “People are always

ruining things for you” (Salinger, 1951, p. 95) are his own words, as well as “I sort of

miss everybody I told about.” (Salinger, 1951, p. 230)

 88

3.7 Self-Destructive Aspect of Holden Caulfield

Self-destruction is a confusing and a problematic issue to some extent. Socially

awkward behaviors could be the reason of an individual’s self-destruction. They start to

deteriorate one’s psyche within time. An individual could also undergo a self-destructive

process and act out awkwardly as a consequence. She/he also could behave in a way

which gradually terminates her / his relationships and lead her / his self-destruction as a

natural outcome of this process.

This type of a vicious circle in terms of self-destruction is possible to be observed

in Holden Caulfield’s situation. As for the relationships and the interactions of his,

Holden moves back and forth. While we see him trying to communicate with another

person at one point of the narrative, he surprises us by avoiding contact with someone

with no specific reason some time later. This linear but non-progressive movement then

turns into a circular one and he finds himself at the same place, which means committing

the same action and getting the same result repeatedly.

Holden’s process of self-destruction led by his alienated self and its ambivalent

desires manifest themselves in a way which is unconsciously triggered. When the

specific events taking place within the course of the narrative are handled from this

perspective, it could be seen that Holden has no desire of dying or killing himself despite

his seemingly suicidal inclination. He gets involved in a fight with Maurice, “the elevator

guy” of the hotel, who brings a prostitute to Holden. The reason of the fight is that

Holden insists on giving the full price despite Maurice’s claims of the vice versa. In such

a situation and atmosphere, Holden could easily yield and get beaten up to death by this

man, but he chooses to fight and defends himself since it is an outcome of the survival
 89

instinct of a living creature. In other words, we cannot witness a scene in which Holden

is willing to die or is dreaming about it. When it comes to the instinct of survival, it is the

same for the ego, as well. According to Freud, the ego also strives for its own survival

and it draws a contrasting figure with the self-destructive aspects of the self. The ego’s

tendency to ignore what it considers as moral or ethical when faced with a threat —as I

have stated in the related section of the previous chapter— is actually what is observed in

the psyche of Holden. His conformist way of thinking and acting in a way that helps to

create the most advantageous outcome and situation for him are prevalent within the

narrative —when he feels insecure or bored, or when he feels a threat, or simply just does

not like what is going on, he leaves there, he escapes, or at least remains silent if the

former options are not available.

It is also open to debate whether the death drive is active in Holden or not. Now that

he drags himself into a self-destructive cycle unconsciously, there must be a driving force

behind this behavior. The death drive is activated when the id is left without satisfaction

and the individual finds her/himself in an undesired, aggressive and anxious state of

mind, according to pleasure principle. Thus, Holden’s negative attitude toward almost all

people, places, events or concepts affects this satisfaction and gratification indirectly.

As Jung states, traumatic dissociative events play a role on self-destruction, besides

forces and drives; they deteriorate the psyche as a unity. There is no need to pay much

effort to look for such a trauma in Holden, as it is quite apparent from the beginning of

the narrative that the death of Allie is the most and single —as far as we know—

traumatic event in his life. Holden’s commemorating Allie and creating opportunities for

him to remember Allie and to give references to him hint a kind of self-punishment
 90

which brings along the question of sense of guilt. Even though there is no reason for

Holden to accuse himself —as far as we know, again, it is worth paying attention that his

approaching the situation is more than mourning a beloved brother. Holden’s obsession

with mummification and mummified objects in the museum is somewhat linked to the

unconscious regret of being not able to protect. That’s to say, if Holden feels guilty about

his brother’s death, it must be that because he could not prevent this death and save him

from dying —maybe he wants to catch the children before they fall and create a different

ending this time, unlike the time when Allie has died and Holden has been able to do

nothing but just has watched.

Mr. Antolini’s diagnosis about Holden’s process is clear in his sentence that “I can

very clearly see you dying nobly…” and Holden’s indifference reaction is not because he

does not understand the metaphor here, but because he is not concerned with dying or

giving harm to himself as much as he is concerned with being lost in time and being

forgotten. In other words, seemingly what really matters is nothing but Holden’s journey

in both ways.
 91

4. CONCLUSION

Existing only in The Catcher in the Rye but no other books by Salinger, unlike some

other characters such as Franny, Zooey or Seymour, we could speculate that Holden

Caulfield is destined to be alienated from the beginning.

Holden is a teenage boy who shows the symptoms of borderline personality who is

self-destructive, depressed and hard to communicate due to his imbalanced social

attitude. While he has narcissistic tendencies to veil his sense of inferiority and failure in

connection, and has a degraded viewpoint towards “others”, he also seeks for

communication and attempts to interact with others. The extreme anxiety which he

experiences around other people has its roots in his obsession with what others think and

his need for approval on an unconscious level. Being the only other that he really cares

about and whose approval is the most prominent and precious one, Phoebe becomes that

“other” with whom Holden actualizes his idealization. That is to say, Phoebe is the ideal

figure that Holden is never be able to become himself and also a figure he believes that

will never become like the others. With the rest, Holden experiences a projective

identification and thus acts as if they were the ones who had problems, and he does this

to cope with his anxiety. Whereas Phoebe is the idolized figure and has been so since his

childhood. She is a part of first social atmosphere Holden had, which is of course is his

family. As for the family, Allie also has a deep impact on Holden’s personality not with

his presence, but with his disappearance, though. Being the core reason of Holden’s need

for regression, Allie’s death causes Holden to get stuck somewhere in the past, crave for

old days and even maybe reject to become an adult.

 92

Using the word “phony” thirty-five times in the narrative, Holden in a way associates

this word with adults. He claims that all of them are phonies, fakers and insincere beings.

His lack of a proper role model in his family results in assuming them also phonies. We

don’t witness a strong relationship between him and his parents, so the reader might

conclude that they do not have a strong bond, either. His need for regression is apparent

when it comes to Allie, but unconsciously, this lack of proper relationship with the

mother image might lead him to yearn for the intimacy once he had with this mother

image.

Terrified by the idea of becoming one of those phonies, Holden seeks for a solution

in despair. His running away starts as a way of escaping from the unresolved issues, then

it turns into a kind of journey that becomes the most important point in this adventure.

His experience gains meaning and becomes valuable itself as soon as he starts his

narrative. During this overlapping journey and the narrative, Holden shows repetitive

patterns in his acting-out. These patterns mirror his unconscious fantasies alongside.

Such a denial of maturing and being a figure whose sole function is to catch the kids and

save them from falling down from the cliff represents an unconscious fantasy. Being an

image whose core gender identity and sexual properties are blurry, Holden wants to

become genderless and free himself from all these social and sexual intercourses and

issues, since he is scared of not being able to cope with them and stay unapproved. In this

sense, now that he is not able to stop growing up, the only thing he could do is escape

and save kids from this phony world in his fantasies.

Holden’s withdrawal interpersonal strategy could be well understood with the

paragraph above, since his self-image is moving back and forth between his realistic but
 93

hopeless opinion about his self. Apart from the realistic one, his false self-image

sometimes gets interlocked with this wish for being a catcher. This being a catcher is a

metaphor to represent his illusion of being on the good side.

Holden’s anti-heroic self-image is another dimension of his self and this self-image

gradually leads him to a sense of isolation and self-destruction. Holden is an anti-hero

who is not just affected by what happens to him or what difficulties he faces with, but

rather is affected by his own actions and what he, himself does to him. Giving harm to

only himself and having no cruel intentions vindicates him from being a villain, but these

are the monsters that he needs to fight against as a hero.

Holden feels insecure when he is with people and it is quite clear that he has trust

issues deep inside. Trying to interact with people and yearning for communication

always result in giving up because of not knowing how it would go and how it would

end. He has put his trust in only his imaginary audience since the beginning of the

narrative. Despite the fact that his gradually growing isolation is apparent throughout the

novel, what is more important and dangerous is the isolation and alienation towards

himself. Resulting from the traumatic dissociative events taking part in his self-

destruction, his socially awkward behaviors cause him to be on his own at the end of the

day; but it is a more problematic time period for him more than when there are people

around. He does not know what to do with his very self, and his never-ending search for

this self gives his isolated sense of being and self-destructive acts and decisions.

As J.D. Salinger states in his letter that he wrote to a movie producer, “…nobody

seems to agree, but The Catcher in the Rye is a very novelistic novel.” I prefer ending the

conclusion of this study with these words without adding another comment or
 94

contemplation, and hold the opinion that what has been written in this study so far would

itself be a contemplation on Salinger’s very comment on his work.

 95

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CURRICULUM VITAE

Kişisel Bilgiler

Adı Soyadı :Gökçe Uluscu

Doğum Tarihi ve Yeri :08.08.1990 İstanbul
Yabancı Dili :İngilizce

Eğitim

İlköğretim: 1996-2004 Denizköşkler İlköğretim Okulu

Ortaöğretim: 2004-2008 Süleyman Nazif Yabancı Dil Ağırlıklı Lisesi
Lisans: 2008-2012 İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi, Amerikan
Kültürü ve Edebiyatı Anabilim Dalı
Yüksek Lisans: 2014-2018 Yeditepe Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü İngiliz
Dili ve Edebiyatı Anabilim Dalı, Karşılaştırmalı Edebiyat