Expressed And Blessed : Holden 's Battle With Ptsd

Throughout The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, Holden describes two traumatic events that could be the root of his PTSD. The death of his brother Allie, and the death of his old classmate James Castle. In chapter 5, Holden introduces his brother Allie and describes Allie’s death, “I was only thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage. I don't blame them. I really don't. I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon we had that summer, but my hand was already broken and everything by that time”(38-39). This quote shows how traumatic this experience

Firstly, Holden’s PTSD derives from an event that happened in Holden’s past regarding his brother. He tells me that he had a brother named Allie who he was very close to, but sadly Allie passed do to Leukemia. Holden didn’t know how to deal with the death of

What is grief and how does it affect someone? Throughout the novel The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield narrates his experiences during the “madman” period of his life (Salinger 3). As he tells his story, one can clearly tell Holden is grieving and is going through the five stages of Grief. Grief is a cycle of five stages that a person experiences after undergoing a loss of some kind. Before a person is able to move on from the loss, he or she has to go through the stages of grieving and make it to the fifth stage of acceptance. The time frame for this process varies from person to person but can range anywhere from six months to four years (staff). Holden grieves over the loss of his little brother, Allie, who died of cancer. By the time Holden reaches the acceptance stage at the end of the novel, he has been grieving for roughly four years. The stages of grieving include denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Holden suffers from the five stages of grief, with depression being the stage he maintains throughout most of the novel, which leads others to believing that he is only clinically depressed; however, he clearly is suffering from more than just depression.

In the novel The Catcher In The Rye, the main character Holden experiences a massive amount of struggle. One major struggle he experiences is depression. Many teenagers can relate to Holden because throughout the novel he shows some of the struggles that anyone could be going through. While I was reading I felt sympathy for Holden and wanted to reach out and help him get through his struggles. There are many red flags repeatedly showing Holden being depressed. These red flags are not only found in Holden but can be noticed in other people who are depressed.

Everybody has problems, right? But some people’s problems are worse and need to be dealt with accordingly. In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Holden loses his brother Allie to leukemia and multiple things happens to him in the story that is stressing him out and driving him nuts. That is why we find out at the end of the novel that he is checked into a mental hospital. Holden is very immature, he is a habitual liar, and he can drift off during the midst of something because he isn’t focused. Holden has shown us throughout the novel that he is mentally unstable and that is why he is clearly not ready to be released into civilization, he might need to stay here longer.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a known mental health condition triggered after experiencing or seeing a life-threatening event. It is very common around the world, and my new patient, Holden Caulfield, has this kind of disorder. A friend of mine recommended him, knowing that I will probably help him. Throughout our session, I could tell that Holden doesn’t have a normal mind. The death of his brother Allie and witnessing another death, his friend Jame Castle, who committed suicide, may have caused his PTSD. The outcome of experiencing all these tragic events changed his life. His relationship with his parents is vile, and he also does an appalling job in school. Reliving the past, detachment, and agitation, are the main symptoms of Holden’s PTSD.

     Throughout life, an individual may endure emotionally and physically straining moments causing the person to become downhearted, and or irate. These feelings are normal, but may however become a problem when these feelings prohibit someone from living a ‘normal’ life. An estimated 5.2 million American adults ages 18 to 54, or approximately 3.6 percent of people in this age group in a given year, have PTSD (Narrow, Rae, Regier). This purpose of this report is to prove whether or not Holden Caulfield, the main character of J.D. Salingers’s book The Catcher In The Rye, is depressed.

Nineteen million American adults suffer from a major case of depression (Web MD). That is a staggering one in every fifteen people (2 in our classroom alone). Holden Caulfield is clearly one of those people. Depression is a disease that leads to death but is also preventable. Psychology, stressful events, and prescription drugs are causes of depression. Stressful events brought on Holden’s depression. Holden has been trying to withstand losing a brother, living with careless parents, and not having many friends. The Catcher in the Rye is a book that takes us through the frazzled life of Holden Caulfield, who appears to be just a regular teen. But by hearing his thoughts and through heart-wrenching events in the book, the reader learns that

As Eugene McNamara stated in his essay “Holden Caulfield as Novelist”, Holden, of J.D. Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye, had met with long strand of betrayals since he left Pencey Prep. These disappointments led him through the adult world with increasing feelings of depression and self-doubt, leading, finally to his mental breakdown.

Post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a known mental health condition triggered after experiencing or seeing a life threatening event. It is very common around the world, and my new patient, Holden Caulfield, has this kind of disorder. A friend of mine recommended him, knowing that I will probably help him. Throughout our session, I could tell that Holden doesn’t really have a normal mind. The death of his brother Allie and witnessing another death, his friend who committed suicide, may have caused his PTSD. The outcome of experiencing all these tragic events, changed his life. His relationship with his parents is vile, and he also does an appalling job in school. Relieving the past, detachment, and agitation, are the main symptoms of

Holden has shown many signs of having post traumatic stress. Some of the signs Holden had was as stated “triggers that can bring back memories of the trauma accompanied by intense emotional and physical reactions.” Holden always bring up Allie his brother, even when he wrote compositions for Stradlater, “So what I did, I wrote about my brother Allie’s baseball mitt,”(Salinger,38) Holden always tends to bring up the past. This is one of the many signs that Holden shows as the book progress. In the text, “All of a sudden, on my way out to the lobby, I got old Jane Gallagher on the brain again,” (Salinger, 76). Holden continuously brings up many people that has made him feel this way about people. Holden also demonstrates a lack of control when it comes to talking to people. When Holden brother Allie died when Holden was just 13, he punched out all the windows out of the garage saying, “It was just for the hell of it,” (Salinger, 39). This indicates that Holden is not a healthy psychologically adolescent, as he can’t articulate the thoughts of his actions. Holden’s lack of control and ability not to let go of the past shows how Holden is not mentally

The patient, Holden Caulfield, as he told in his story The Catcher in the Rye, written by J. D. Salinger, shows many signs of mental illness. Holden is a confused teenage boy that lives in the heart of New York City. He attended Pencey Prep until recently when he was kicked out because he was unable to apply himself to school. Holden often seems to struggle in his social life and with his emotions. He has trouble fitting in with other people his age and fights with himself over how he should act and think. These struggles are heightened by a traumatic past and highlight many signs of mental illness. All of Holden Caulfield’s symptoms point to more than just typical teenage struggles but to a mix of Post Traumatic Stress

Those situations can be either self-inflicted or not. Either way, it is not their fault for their emotions and reactions to those circumstances. Emotions are uncontrollable, therefore becoming depressed or developing anxiety in reaction to a certain condition would not make it their fault. In the book, the death of Holden’s brother, Allie, really changed him. “I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it” (39). Allie’s death was an uncontrollable event, in which Holden had a very natural reaction to by punching the windows in anger. We can see that he has become very depressed and negative, and has lost the ability to form connections. This kind of behavior, from our perspective, needs some serious attention. For moments throughout the book, it almost appeared that he was considering taking his own life due to the severe depression he was experiencing. “What I really felt like, though, was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out the window” (104). Holden is saying that since he is so depressed and alone that he honestly feels like committing suicide. His parents had pushed him away in order to deal with their grief, so Holden was utterly alone. He needed someone to talk to and to guide him through that difficult time in his life, which is where a therapist or a respected mentor could have played a vital role in coping and accepting the loss of his loved

It is exhausting for a person to fight a war inside their head every single day. One in ten young people experience a period of major depression at some point in their adolescence. Holden Caulfield is not the exception; he is emotionally unstable and suffers from a major disease not discussed in the novel. Though many think Holden is not suffering from a mental illness, his actions relate closely to the symptoms of an illness or disorder of some kind. In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield suffers from a Borderline Personality Disorder displayed through Holden’s excessive avoidance of his problems, substance abuse, and bouts of intense anger.

Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye exhibits unusual behavior during the course of the novel. His actions resemble those of one who suffers from Post-traumatic stress disorder. After his younger brother, Allie, dies of leukemia, Holden’s feelings toward the world change drastically. He begins to isolate himself from others. Even when he feels a connection with someone, he finds something to dislike about them and pushes them away. Holden also experiences frequent flashbacks to times when Allie was alive. He holds on to these memories and blocks Allie’s death from his mind. His PTSD also causes Holden to endure anxiety attacks. These attacks further push away the people he loves and makes it difficult for him to cope with his feelings.