Blame For Charlie's Mental Breakdown In Catcher In The Rye

For my paper, I am diagnosing Charlie from the film, Perks of Being a Wallflower. Before I delve into Charlie’s diagnosis, I will provide some background information about his character. In the film, Charlie is a 15 year old boy who has recently started high school as a freshman. He lives with both parents, and his sister who is a couple years older than him. Charlie also has a brother who has gone away to college. In school, Charlie is seen to be good with academics, particularly in English, since he has an interest in writing. However, Charlie does not have any friends and his best friend had kill himself in the last year. Furthermore, Charlie is seen to be quite socially awkward around his peers and usually keeps to himself.

In the scope of things, Holden’s actions to alienate himself perpetuated his depression and triggered his downward spiral and mental decline. There was a clear internal conflict between his need to protect himself from the pain others cause and, his intrinsic need for companionship. A self-destructive cycle was born out of this conflict. Holden would alienate himself for protection, this resulted in him feeling lonely and depressed, this resulted in his reaching out to others, the interactions lead him to believe that people are destructive which ultimately leads to him alienating

Holden Caulfield, the protagonist in J.D Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, has had great difficulty interacting in a productive way with people he encounters during the novel. Holden doesn't take responsibility for his actions, he creates excuses for himself after realizing he is failing in school as well as other aspects of his life. His constant use of the defense mechanism, displacement, and blaming other's 'phoniness' for everything bad that happens to him, is intended to protect his own insecurities about what he is going through in his life.

Holden’s alienation is a result of how he wants to avoid the problems in his life and how he doesn 't want to acknowledge them.This character of a brooding adolescent is created to show the physical effects of events in his life. Throughout the chapters he frequently refers to the hardships in his life.These hardships include his brother’s death at a young age, his intimacy issues, and inability to form healthy relationships.Holden’s innocent manner therefore is caused by the impression that his brother’s death left on him.His unknown sense of identity has subsequently made him feel detached from his own family. As his elder brother and younger sister are considerably successful,Their successes have made the recently kicked out Holden feel

Holden seems to be lonely and this can reflect back to Allie's death. He doesn't really have anyone to catch him from falling into the ravine, off the rye field the way he would catch the kids. He doesn't have anyone to motivate him to succeed. The reader is taken back and forth between Holden's remembering and re-living the traumatic pain of his past with his family and the complete disconnect he has experienced. Allie's death changed all of Holden's family as well as himself. It's almost as if when Allie died, the household died. When Holden broke the windows in the garage, on the night Allie died, he said, "My hand still hurts me once in a while when it rains and all, and I can't make a real fist... I mean I'm not going to be a goddam surgeon or violinist or anything anyway" (Salinger 39). This disconnect Holden is experiencing between him and his parents is causing him to lose motivation to succeed in school and in life. According to Freud, it's Holden's unconscious state of mind that drives his defense mechanism to seclude himself from his parents and actually other adults as well.

Judging from the patient's behavior and tone, I believe that Holden Caulfield shows more symptoms of Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD), the symptoms that the patient shows is most possibly caused by the traumatic death of his brother,but this should not to be mistaken as Teen Grief. Based off of the transcripts, the patient shows all the symptoms for Antisocial Personality Disorder: he exhibits disdain for authority, impulsiveness, aggression, amusement in lying, irresponsibility, and disregard for the well-being of others. As in the transcripts, it states that he "broke all the windows in the garage... [Holden] broke all the goddam windows with [his] fist, just for the hell of it." (39) venting his aggression that stemmed from the grief

To begin with, Holden has isolated himself from the world, much like many adolescents who have created their own alienation from society to deal with their dilemmas. Social alienation is a condition reflected by low common values when one feels, isolation from a human is the end result they believe they need. “I felt like giving someone a buzz. My brother, My sister, Jane Gallagher's mother, Sally Hayes, Carl Luce. So I ended up not calling anybody.” (Salinger, 77) These are the words of Holden which reflected his current state. Here, one can see, Holden has options to talk to someone and interact but refuses. For many people, alienation can be both a good and bad state, It prevents one from getting hurt or losing people because

Holden is detached from responsibilities, and life in general. Holden does not apply himself in school and shows that in his note to his teacher in an essay, “It is all right with me if you flunk me though as I am flunking everything else except English anyway, Respectfully yours, Holden Caulfield (12).” The reason Holden does not care about school is because he does not care about his future, “Oh, I feel some concern for my future, all right. Sure. Sure, I do...But not too much, I guess. Not too much, I guess (14).” Holden is also detached from his family, specifically his father, and not having a loving father figure can affect a person, “You can hit my father over the head with a chair and he won't take up, but my mother, all you have to do to my mother is cough somewhere in Siberia and she'll hear you. She's nervous as hell (158).” The only meaningful relationship Holden has is with Phoebe. Holden can not confide with anybody except for Phoebe and even if there was someone else to confide with Holden doesn’t have the will to explain the problems that are occurring, “I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it (122).” Part of the treatment will be to help Holden to trust again. This trust will allow him to open up and not keep all of his problems to

His frustration grows after his friends start heading off to college and has a constant stressor from all the flashbacks he’s having, believing that he himself killed his Aunt. Charlie was close to his aunt as a child and it is obvious that aunt Helen was playing favoritism when it came to charlie. Aunt Helen gave him a special attention and she was kind to him, she told him that she understood him and he was special but this in a way was a ruse. Charlie repressed his memories of aunt Helen 's sexual assault but started realizing eventually, Charlie has a mental breakdown during his first sexual encounter with Sam and the realization of his past comes flooding in after she touched his leg similar to the way his aunt Helen did to him. He was sexually assaulted by his aunt and he tried forgot all of this and he tried to move on with his life but he saw memories that haunted him. This could be the possible reason and explanation as to why he said to her sister that he wished their aunt to die. Afterward, charlie is in a hospital after trying to commit suicide and must start accepting the truth to get past what happened. Charlie is often trying to please people and is always worried about how other people feel but never truly worries about himself, it could be that charlie is very caring but it is possible that charlie has had this way of thinking instilled in his mind: aunt help was very disturbed as charlie knew this and because of this he was constantly

A disparate situation is presented to readers in The Catcher in the Rye. Early in the novel, Holden expresses the reason for his difficulties in school as his being: “always surrounded by phonies.”(Salinger 13) Holden is correct; he is completely incapable of relating to his peers. However he takes no time to consider potential solutions to his problem. During his conversation with Mr. Spencer, Holden communicates that he deals with his troubles by simply quitting; putting minimal effort into academics and socialization. Since Holden never addresses his emotions directly, he fails to realize

The Catcher in the Rye Take Home Test 36. This novel is called “Catcher in the Rye” because Holden wants to be the catcher in the rye. He wants to catch kids before they fall off the cliff when they’re playing in the field. He wants to stop the kids before they become phonies. He wants to stop them from seeing things like f--- you that corrupts them.

It is important to realize in the book, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden has experienced his fair share of trauma. From skipping school and smoking cigarettes, to sleeping with prostitutes, Holden tries to cope with his feelings of pain. His main source of coping throughout this book was his use of insults and judging others. Holden is using these to try and make himself feel like just another teenage boy, but the reality he struggles with his mental health. The author is clearly trying to help readers understand the thoughts of a depressed individual Holden experienced his fair share of traumatic events.

In the novel, “The Catcher in the Rye,” there are two characters that have many similarities but also differences. One difference that plays a key role in the novel is that Holden does not live at home, while Phoebe does. This plays a key role in the novel because this is mainly what the novel is about. At the beginning of the novel, Holden is in a mental hospital and basically goes crazy. Also, something Holden took very hard was the death of his brother, Allie. Phoebe did not take the death of Allie as hard as Holden did. Phoebe was young when Allie died so she didn’t really know what was going on, but Holden didn’t believe it when his brother died. He kept thinking over and over in his head that Allie was not actually dead. “I’d make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I’d say to him

Charlie’s depression only worsens thus more when he kisses Sam at the party instead of his girlfriend and is told to stay away for a while. During that time he had no one to talk to, not even his family. Before when he had no friends he didn’t know true loneliness, only when he knew the feeling of having friends and the feeling of belonging did he fully feel the void of not having any. His not being around his friends did not hinder his love for them however as he still cared about his friends and he manages to fix their friendship again when he protects Patrick from Brad's football teammates. Throughout the course of the novel Charlie's depression has it’s ups and downs, when nearing the end Charlie gets very bad and finds himself in the hospital frozen in a strange state of shock or terror. He is unable to talk and comprehend what is happening around him. His friends and family visit him and with their help he is able to bring himself back up again. However even through all of his troubles, all Charlie wants is for others to be

His meltdown in Alan's office one could have seen from a mile away, with it the ultimate heralding of displacement for Charlie's pain, and final straw to let Charlie live his life alone. (Displacement is but one of many defense mechanisms that involves shifting aggressive or hurtful emotions away from one’s self to a more “acceptable” or less threatening outlet.) Yet for most who watched the movie most likely, Charlie didn't get immediately better right away to their surprise. In honest words taken from an episode of House I once watched, he uttered a line that rings particularly true in this circumstance: "We tell ourselves it helps. To make [them] talk about it. To help... heal. When all you've done is make [someone] cry." After Charlie's reveal of his true past he seems to be by all standards progressing. That is until he sets out to kill himself, if not by his own gun then a police officer's. In all three main areas of his mental make-up Charlie has been both affected and ravaged, his entire being but a husk of what he accomplished four years prior. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is illustrated through Charlie as a life-changer, a psychological diagnosis that alters your entire core of being without proper therapy or treatment. (Diagnosis in