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I totally agree, Dawn. I wrote my comment on this discussion already. I discussed how I taught this to one of my own pupils who had had a mental breakdown. I am a teacher in a unit for vulnerable pupils. She wasn't engaging with her psychologists or anybody else. She loved English and I gave her a choice of the GCSE texts. She chose Catcher in The Rye. If I hadn't have had the background of teaching students with mental health problems I feel I would have been slightly out of my depth. She certainly wasn't. She analysed Holden Caulfield's demise better than anyone. She totally related it to herself. By the end I really wanted her to take heed over Caulfield's warning about not telling, however she was totally empathetic to his warning as one she had opened the doors to the professionals she felt everybody wanted to delve in. But she could also see that he was in the position he was because he had nobody who he could trust to talk to. this novel helped my student immensely. She grew into and adult in three months and also got an A* in her GCSE's. It really did help her overcome her own issues. By the end she had also developed eye contact and regained her lost sense of humour. A good memory in my teaching career.
Interesting that you both think it's a book about mental illness! I think it's a book about a boy coming of age and all the conflicts and confusion normal for that point in life.
But if it was just about coming of age why did he end up in a secure unit? Of the thousands of pupils I have taught over the years only about 7 have been detained by the mental health act. It is so about mental illness, even if it does coincide with coming of age.
Donna wrote: "But if it was just about coming of age why did he end up in a secure unit? Of the thousands of pupils I have taught over the years only about 7 have been detained by the mental health act. It is so..." To my mind it was kind of like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." In the 1940s and 50s everybody with a problem fitting into society was deemed certifiable, at least by the writers of the day. I worked in a psychiatric unit for a year in the early 60s and remember the mood of the day. We all felt threatened by psychiatric diagnosis--and the feeling that the world would come to an end any day. Maybe we and the writers were mentally ill, or would be deemed so today, but what the book spoke to in its time was the need for rigid conformity and acceptance of society's norms, from the standpoint of the outsider who only sought comfort in his own skin in a very demanding, circumscribed environment.
I totally get your point. He is an individual who is struggling to conform. In that generation depression and anxiety was treated differently. I get that. However I still feel he is anxious and depressed about growing up. Some might say these are natural responses but I do feel he has depression and anxiety which would be dealt with totally differently in this day and age because mental health issues are not the stigma they were. your comments have made me want to read it again though. Thank you.
It's interesting that the book has been seen differently by people with mental health issues. Holden is extremely anxious, and that affects people in different ways. I would say his conflict is because he is struggling NOT to conform, rather than to conform. In the 1950s we were all so alike that it was a little terrifying, and to be a teenager, one was pressed to go along with the crowd, yet there was that impulse rebel and make your mark. That's where the hippies came from.
Mary...I write as a teacher (previously) and a therapist (currently). Holden had problems with his thinking and ended up on a unit because he was a risk to himself. His relationship with his sister is a whole dissertation (for many!). We are of a similar age and I see your point about conformity, but have to add that I am still "a hippie" because of my views of peace vs. war. I think we all carry our own issues of sadness or worry or loss but Holden's decline was more than anxiety. It is a book to peel back the layers of mental illness and offer a unique glimpse into the thinking of somebody who is struggling to find their true self. Holden's story is moving and teaches each of us to reach outward to help each other and find the support we all need at times in our lives.
Some of us seem to be forgetting that Holden was a fictional creation. Including myself, I suppose. The book was meaningful to me at a crucial time in my development and obviously it was to many others as well. That it is still the cause of so much controversy is amusing, yet there is a real possibility that I always missed the point Salinger was making. But I love the book and Holden will always seem very real to me, a lifelong collector of wounded birds, real and fictional. I know it has had a profound effect on many with adjustment issues. On some level I join them, but the analysis of this woeful and hilarious book is really beyond me. I'll see it in a very different light from now on.
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Donna
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Sep 01, 2012 01:07PM
I totally agree, Dawn. I wrote my comment on this discussion already. I discussed how I taught this to one of my own pupils who had had a mental breakdown. I am a teacher in a unit for vulnerable pupils. She wasn't engaging with her psychologists or anybody else. She loved English and I gave her a choice of the GCSE texts. She chose Catcher in The Rye. If I hadn't have had the background of teaching students with mental health problems I feel I would have been slightly out of my depth. She certainly wasn't. She analysed Holden Caulfield's demise better than anyone. She totally related it to herself. By the end I really wanted her to take heed over Caulfield's warning about not telling, however she was totally empathetic to his warning as one she had opened the doors to the professionals she felt everybody wanted to delve in. But she could also see that he was in the position he was because he had nobody who he could trust to talk to. this novel helped my student immensely. She grew into and adult in three months and also got an A* in her GCSE's. It really did help her overcome her own issues. By the end she had also developed eye contact and regained her lost sense of humour. A good memory in my teaching career.
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Interesting that you both think it's a book about mental illness! I think it's a book about a boy coming of age and all the conflicts and confusion normal for that point in life.
But if it was just about coming of age why did he end up in a secure unit? Of the thousands of pupils I have taught over the years only about 7 have been detained by the mental health act. It is so about mental illness, even if it does coincide with coming of age.
Donna wrote: "But if it was just about coming of age why did he end up in a secure unit? Of the thousands of pupils I have taught over the years only about 7 have been detained by the mental health act. It is so..." To my mind it was kind of like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." In the 1940s and 50s everybody with a problem fitting into society was deemed certifiable, at least by the writers of the day. I worked in a psychiatric unit for a year in the early 60s and remember the mood of the day. We all felt threatened by psychiatric diagnosis--and the feeling that the world would come to an end any day. Maybe we and the writers were mentally ill, or would be deemed so today, but what the book spoke to in its time was the need for rigid conformity and acceptance of society's norms, from the standpoint of the outsider who only sought comfort in his own skin in a very demanding, circumscribed environment.
I totally get your point. He is an individual who is struggling to conform. In that generation depression and anxiety was treated differently. I get that. However I still feel he is anxious and depressed about growing up. Some might say these are natural responses but I do feel he has depression and anxiety which would be dealt with totally differently in this day and age because mental health issues are not the stigma they were. your comments have made me want to read it again though. Thank you.
It's interesting that the book has been seen differently by people with mental health issues. Holden is extremely anxious, and that affects people in different ways. I would say his conflict is because he is struggling NOT to conform, rather than to conform. In the 1950s we were all so alike that it was a little terrifying, and to be a teenager, one was pressed to go along with the crowd, yet there was that impulse rebel and make your mark. That's where the hippies came from.
Mary...I write as a teacher (previously) and a therapist (currently). Holden had problems with his thinking and ended up on a unit because he was a risk to himself. His relationship with his sister is a whole dissertation (for many!). We are of a similar age and I see your point about conformity, but have to add that I am still "a hippie" because of my views of peace vs. war. I think we all carry our own issues of sadness or worry or loss but Holden's decline was more than anxiety. It is a book to peel back the layers of mental illness and offer a unique glimpse into the thinking of somebody who is struggling to find their true self. Holden's story is moving and teaches each of us to reach outward to help each other and find the support we all need at times in our lives.
Some of us seem to be forgetting that Holden was a fictional creation. Including myself, I suppose. The book was meaningful to me at a crucial time in my development and obviously it was to many others as well. That it is still the cause of so much controversy is amusing, yet there is a real possibility that I always missed the point Salinger was making. But I love the book and Holden will always seem very real to me, a lifelong collector of wounded birds, real and fictional. I know it has had a profound effect on many with adjustment issues. On some level I join them, but the analysis of this woeful and hilarious book is really beyond me. I'll see it in a very different light from now on.
