Insanity: The Future of Creativity

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There are some big events that can leave us traumatized for life. How we deal with the issue is all tied to our mind. In the book, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden is a teenager who has suffered the trauma of losing a brother. Since then, he has been unable to find his place in life. Holden described the aftermath of that day, "I was only thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage"(Salinger 38-39). Holden had a mental break down that changed his perspective on life immensely. Everything that happens to him continues to weaken his state of mind, causing him to not caring for the consequences of his actions, such as flunking out of schools. According to the psychologist Freud, to analyze the author and his or her life, the literary work is seen to provide analytical evidence. This implies that the traumatic life that Holden carries probably reflects Salinger's life. In the Internet biography entitled, "J.D. Salinger" from The Biography Channel, it is stated that," Salinger was drafted into the army... [He] did not escape the war without some trauma- he was hospitalized after suffering a nervous breakdown". Both Salinger and his figurative character Holden, show signs of being mentally unstable. Freudian psychoanalytic perspectives would assess those signs as; compulsive lying by exaggeration and making fantasy worlds, depression that comes from isolation, and emotional instabilities caused by violent outbursts. Freudian theorems suggest that an excessive amount of lying is a sign of being mentally unstable. There are many situations in which Holden calls the people around him, phonies. When Holden went to go see a play with Sally, he negatively criticized actors,... ... middle of paper ... ...ifficult to connect the ideas to Holden, especially the author. The ideas sounded very confusing ,that killed my sense of flow. Another thing that really murdered my essay was the fact that everything was so similar. Wouldn’t you say being mentally unstable is the same as having emotional instabilities? Fail. "J.D. Salinger." 2013. The Biography Channel website. Nov 22 2013, 03:00 This article was J.D at his best. He doesn’t have many biographies and this one got straight to the point. I used some info but as I said before, I was just unable to connect the ideas, much like Holden was unable to express his feeling correctly. Really I believe it was the overlapping of much of the ideas. You’d write one thing and say,” that sounds like isolation, but I used it as exaggeration… wait but everything is exaggerated”.
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