Codependent Holden Caulfield

A classic codependent is someone so emotionally entwined with an addict that she cannot extract herself from the chaos of his drug-induced lifestyle. His addictive erratic behavior harms not only himself, but her and others indirectly. Another type of codependent is someone whose life spins out of control because they are drawn irresistibly to the neediness of others, as seems to be the case with The Catcher in the Rye 's Holden Caulfield.

A close reading reveals ten instances in which Holden goes out on a limb for someone. The first is when he takes a swing at his prep school roommate, Stradlater, because he sees him as a sexual predator to Jane Gallagher, a vulnerable girl whom he knows well. Here are Holden's thoughts after he has been knocked flat and had his nose bloodied by the large and stronger athlete: "I just kept laying there on Ely's bed, thinking about Jane and all. It just drove me stark staring mad when I thought about her and Stradlater parked somewhere in that fat-assed Ed Banky's car. Every time I thought about it, I felt like jumping out the window. The thing is, you didn't know Stradlater. I knew him. Most guys at Pency just talked about having sexual intercourse with girls all the time--like Ackley, for instance-- but old Stradlater really did it. I was personally acquainted with at least two girls he gave the time to. That's the truth. ... I kept laying there in the dark anyway, though, trying not to think about old Jane and Stradlater in that goddam Ed Banky's car. But it was almost impossible. The trouble was, I knew that guy Stradlater's technique. ...I damn near puked listening to him. His date kept saying, 'No--please. Please, don't. Please.' But old Stradlater kept snowing her in his Abraham Lincoln, sincere voice, and finally there'd be this silence in the back of the car." 

In the next instance, Holden lies consolingly to Mr. Spencer so this aging History teacher will not feel bad about flunking him: "I told him I was a real Moron, and all that stuff. I told him how I would have done exactly the same thing if I'd been in his place, and how most people didn't appreciate how tough it is being a teacher. That kind of stuff. The old bull. ...'Look, sir. Don't worry about me,' I said. 'I mean it. I'll be all right. I'm just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don't they?'
'I don't know boy. I don't know.'
I hate it when somebody answers that way. 'Sure. Sure, they do,' I said. 'I mean it, sir. Please don't worry about me.'"

Next, on a night train to the City Holden runs into to classmate Ernest Morrow's mother and concocts an elaborate lie about Ernest's friends wanting him to run for Class President. Holden's intent is to make her feel better about her horse's ass of a son: "'Ernest's father and I sometimes worry about him," she said. ..."He's a very sensitive boy. He's never really been a terribly good mixer with other boys. ...'
Sensitive. That killed me. That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a goddam toilet seat.
I gave her a good look. She didn't look like any dope to me. She looked like she might have a pretty damn good idea what a bastard  she was the mother of. ...Mothers are all slightly insane. The thing is though, I liked old Morrow's mother. She was all right.
...'Old Ernie,' I said. 'He's one of the most popular boys at Pency. Did you know that?'
'No, I didn't.'
...I had her glued to her seat. You take somebody's mother, all they want to hear about is what a hot-shot their son is.
...'Did he tell you about the elections?" I asked her. 'The class elections?'
She shook her head. I had her in a trance , like. I really did.
'Well, a bunch of us wanted Ernie to be president of the class. I mean, he was the unanimous choice.'"

Holden next tells about playing checkers with Jane Gallagher when she became upset over a confrontation with her stepfather, and Holden overreacted. He describes his actions as almost involuntary: "Then all of a sudden, this tear plopped down on the checkerboard. On one of the red squares--boy, I can still see it. She just rubbed it into the board with her finger. I don't know why, but it bothered hell out of me. So what I did was, I went over and made her move over on the glider so that I could sit down next to her--I practically sat down in her lap, as a matter of fact. Then she really started to cry, and the next thing I knew, I was kissing her all over--anywhere--her eyes, her nose, her forehead, her eyebrows and all, her ears--her whole face except her mouth and all. She sort of wouldn't let me get to her mouth. Anyway, it was the closest we ever got to necking."

In a nightclub later Holden tells a group of tourist women from Seattle that they just missed Gary Cooper. It's a lie he tells so they will have something interesting to report back home. Holden even worries about the welfare of animals, repeatedly expressing concern over how the ducks in Central Park get by during winter. Holden offers some nuns an over-sized donation, which they gracefully turn down. He even changes his mind about having sex with the prostitute, Sunny, whom he sees as too young. They talk instead, even though she had taken off her dress.

The ninth example of Holden's codependent drive to help and protect others is when he confesses to his younger sister Phoebe what he wants to do with his life--to be a "Catcher in the Rye" and protect children from going over an imaginary cliff. Near the end of the book, Holden sits in the rain in his red "people-hunting" cap while he watches Phoebe ride the carousel. "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is playing in the background. The depth of his emotion shows how strongly he feels about seeing her safe and happy: "My hunting hat gave me quite a lot of protection, in a way, but I got soaked, anyway. I didn't care though. I felt so happy all of a sudden, the way old Phoebe kept going around and around. I was damn near bawling, I felt so damn  happy, if you want to know the truth. ...It was just that she looked so nice, the way she kept going around and around, in her blue coat and all."

It could be said that Holden is just a caring, kind person and these are all just examples of his compassionate nature. But if that were so, it wouldn't have put him in a mental hospital.

On the contrary, a case can be made that Holden became  hypersensitized by the death from leukemia of his little brother, Ailee. The suicide of Holden's classmate James Castle deepened that sensitivity. Holden's unresolved grief sabotages his life, rendering him unable to function normally. He is highly intelligent, but he can't concentrate and repeatedly flunks out  or drops out of school. Everywhere he turns he sees something wrong, making him anxious, confused, lonely. He cries and has feelings of bleeding from the gut. To make sense of his chaotic state of mind, he overreacts to everyday events, like meeting Earnest Morrow's mother on the train and concocting that elaborate lie.

Unresolved grief can be complicated and debilitating as we obsess over our relationship with the loved one who  died. Guilt can arise over something we said or did or failed to apologize for to someone whose dearness we may never have acknowledged.

When we are emotionally intimate with someone over a period of years the shared experiences and feelings become a part of our identity, anchoring us in the swirl of life. The sudden loss of these identity reference points can shake us to our knees, and it can take a long time to recover--years. Codependency can be a coping mechanism whereby we mimic with strangers a ritual cascade of apologies for our imagined inadequacies toward the person we lost. On the outside we seem normal, but inside our skin we writhe in pain from an invisible unnamed source.

Compassion may be the highest human value, but some people get hooked on it like a drug. Codependency is the clinician's label for being too human, so attuned to others' pain that we spin out of orbit as our own needs go unattended.

The measure of Holden's emotional investment in Ailee and James Castle is the level of chaos in his life that surfaced in the wake of their passing. Like a junkie, Holden craved the good feelings that came when he did something that relieved or prevented suffering. It gave him a sense of control over his chaotic life and made his bad feelings go away for a while. But it was never enough. And we are left wondering whether Holden will spend the rest of his life playing God and trying to fix the world instead of taking care of himself.

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Narcissist or Codependent? Diagnose Yourself With Holden Caulfield

Do you like Holden? Or do you think he's an idiot? And what does that say about you?

Framing The Catcher in the Rye through a psychologist's lens may help in understanding your reaction to this controversial classic and shed light on your personality.

Holden imagines himself in a field of rye where children are playing and feels an urge to protect them from falling over a cliff. Entertain for the moment that the field of rye represents Holden's feelings of codependency, an excessive preoccupation with the needs of others, as in the urge to protect the innocent and vulnerable.

Foreshadowed by his repeatedly expressed concern for the ducks in Central Park, Holden announces to Phoebe that he wants to be a "catcher in the rye." Similar behavior reappears in the final scene when he's in tears, sitting in the rain in his red "people hunting hat" watching Phoebe ride the carousel with "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" playing in the background.

A narcissist could care less about protecting others, vulnerable or otherwise. Narcissists are incapable of empathy. A character like Holden would seem ridiculous, even repellent. The narcissist might feel more attracted to characters like Ayn Rand's John Gault.

I read somewhere that ninety-six percent of the world's population have codependent tendencies. This could help explain the vast popularity of the book while a few readers are repelled.

(Lest I get torched for accusing people of being codependent or narcissistic, lets be clear that this is a mental exercise intended only to deepen understanding of a book. Only you, or your therapist, know your behavioral tendencies.)

The Effect of Salinger's Combat Experience on His Writing

In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield's unrealistic concern for "little kids" resonates with the classic layman's definition of a codependent personality--someone whose life is spinning out of control out of concern for someone with a substance abuse problem.* Holden's codependency is addressed in a separate posting, but it is worth noting here that Holden, as a doppelganger for Salinger, can reflect the author's emotional state. Codependency, the compulsion to rescue others, can be the result of having seen so many men shot, killed, wounded and maimed and the Dachau concentration camp's emaciated bodies among the smell of burning flesh.

Salinger's war experience may account for the rambling structure and overall content of The Catcher in the Rye, as the book was worked on during endless months of combat overseas. Thoughts and memories of home gave the mind relief from the blood, chaos and gore and had a lot to do with Salinger's exquisite loving attention to these details of setting and character. I suspect it kept him from going mad sooner than he did.

He was once seen typing away under a desk while his unit was under fire. Everyone else had taken cover.

It has been widely expressed that Salinger was suffering from PTSD caused by combat trauma. It is logical that an extreme need to protect the innocent could arise from witnessing over a period of years the massive destruction of humanity. Holden could represent an expression of this distorted hyper-sensitivity for the welfare of the innocent. Holden could have been a healthy way to channel and defuse overwhelming emotions, expressing a self-destructive compulsion by creating a character to act out and resolve it.

*[Wikipedia]"Codependency is defined as a psychological condition or a relationship in which a person is controlled or manipulated by another who is affected with a pathological condition (typically narcissism or drug addiction); and in broader terms, it refers to the dependence on the needs of, or control of, another.[1] It also often involves placing a lower priority on one's own needs, while being excessively preoccupied with the needs of others.[2] Codependency can occur in any type of relationship, including family, work, friendship, and also romantic, peer or community relationships.[2] Codependency may also be characterized by denial, low self-esteem, excessive compliance, or control patterns.[2] Narcissists are considered to be natural magnets for the codependent."I also STRONGLY suspect that a major factor in the rambling structure and overall content of CiTR is that it was largely written while overseas during wartime. This had a lot to do with Salinger's exquisite loving attention to the details of setting and character. That he cherished his memories of home is clearly evident in the richness of this content.

For the Kid Who Doesn't Get The Catcher in the Rye

[Spoiler at paragraph 12]

Some readers of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, have expressed frustration with the book, complaining that it has no plot or they have trouble relating to the spoiled, whiny rich kid narrator, Holden Caulfield. If you are among this crowd, read on. I had the same response when I first read it in 1964 at age nineteen.

Does it make sense to you that Holden was so traumatized by the deaths of his brother, Ailee, and his dorm-mate, James Castle, that he couldn't function? Today's diagnosis would be PTSD. Do you know anyone with that condition? If you did, you would recognize the symptoms in Holden.

Has anyone close to you died? Do you get it that people can be so torn up over the loss of a loved one that it takes them years to get over it unless they get professional help, if even then?

Does the book make sense to you knowing that Salinger himself spent time in a mental ward for "battle fatigue" during World War II after participating in the Normandy landing at Utah Beach, where he could see men, some perhaps close friends, cut to pieces and blown apart by German machine guns and artillery. He was also at the horrific Battle of the Bulge and other engagements, large and small, where American troops were decimated.

Salinger was among the first Allied soldiers to visit a concentration camp. He saw emaciated bodies piled up to be burned. Skeletal human remains were strewn about. The starved liberated prisoners were walking skeletons. "You could live a lifetime, Salinger told his daughter, "and never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose."

Does it make sense to you that someone who had experienced what Salinger had might acquire a heightened sense of compassion for his fellow man and want to protect the innocent and vulnerable? Doesn't it make sense that he could relieve his pain by creating a character like Holden to express those feelings? 

And doesn't this deeper perspective make the teenaged angst explanation of the book seem superficial, even dismissive?

Holden was almost seventeen and confronting the complications of life without much input from his parents, who themselves were probably still consumed by grief over Allie's death. Holden makes it clear on multiple occasions how alone he feels. PTSD could have made him edgy, jaded and negative.

All of life can be viewed from opposite poles, positive or negative. "Phony" is a term denoting a level of judgment that Holden's juvenile mind is too inexperienced to understand that people put up a social front often for valid reasons, with good intent. It's a defense mechanism, a tool for social navigation. Every human being has a public persona they polish to show the world, when deep inside they are scared little children or have other phobias or hangups.

The irony is that Holden thinks he is being cool by calling out the phoniness, when he has only skimmed the surface of humfan understanding. But at the end of the book he lets down his own defenses, "practically bawling" as he sits on the bench in the rain watching his sister Phoebe on the carousel: "She just looks so nice," he says, "in her blue coat, going around and around."

"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is playing as the carousel turns: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2di83WAOhU  (As sung by The Platters a few years later.) Here are the opening lines: "They, asked me how I knew, our true love was true. I of course replied, Something here inside, Can not be denied."

The book is rich with deep insight into the humanity of an adolescent boy striving to understand the adult world he is growing into while weighed down by unresolved grief over the deaths of a brother and a friend. He is [spoiler] pulled back from the brink of running away by the innocence and unconditional love of Phoebe. 

Reading the book fifty years after my first experience, I could see that Holden's were happy tears because he could not deny the love of his devoted little sister, who had just fought furiously for his well-being. Because of her he got the mental health care he so desperately needed, in a cushy "rest home" in California, where his big brother could see him every weekend.

What can be greater than discovering you are loved and not alone?

The Catcher in the Rye is not so much a book for young adults or teenagers, although it is promoted that way because of Holden's age. The themes of compassion and mental illness and redemption are more adult in nature. The popular academic focus on teenage angst barely scratches the surface.  

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Schoolteacher Archetypes in The Catcher in the Rye

The teachers we remember are the ones who were really good and really bad. With Mr. Spencer and Mr. Antolini, Salinger delivers archetypes of these two extremes.

Salinger brands Mr. Spencer into our memory: [Holden's visiting Spencer in his apartment. He's been summoned there by Spencer, his history teacher, after Spencer learned Holden was being expelled for poor academic performance. Spencer reads to Holden from one of his exams.]

"Dear Mr. Spencer. That is all I know about the Egyptians. I can’t seem to get very interested in them although your lectures are very interesting. It is all right with me if you flunk me though as I am flunking everything else except English anyway. Respectfully yours, Holden Caulfield."

He put my goddam paper down then and looked at me like he’d just beaten hell out of me in ping-pong or something. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive him for reading me that crap out loud. I wouldn’t’ve read it out loud to him if he’d written it—I really wouldn’t. In the first place, I’d only written that damn note so that he wouldn’t feel too bad about flunking me.

“Do you blame me for flunking you, boy?” he said.

“No, sir! I certainly don’t,’ I said. I wished to hell he’d stop calling me “boy” all the time. 

...

"What would you have done in my place?" he said. "Tell the truth, boy."

Well, you could see he really felt pretty lousy about flunking me. So I shot the bull for a while. I told him I was a real moron, and all that stuff. I told him how I would've done exactly the same thing if I'd been in his place, and how most people didn't appreciate how tough it is being a teacher. That kind of stuff. The old bull.

The funny thing is, though, I was sort of thinking of something else while I shot the bull. I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park Slouth. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go. I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondererd if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.

Holden has zoned out. Spencer is clueless about Holden's predicament, the crises he's going through. And all the teacher can think about is covering his ass and soothing his guilt at Holden's expense. He's kicking the boy while he's down instead of trying to understand. Some would call it tough love. I call it stupidity and incompetence.

Antolini, on the other hand, expresses empathy and offers Holden some very powerful advice.

A: "I have a feeling that you're riding for some kind of a terrible, terrible fall. But I don't honestly know what kind...Are you listening to me?" [Remember, James Castle "fell" out of a window and Antolini picked up the body.]
..."It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in looking as if he might have played football in college. ...Or you may end up in some business office, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer." 
..."This fall I think you're riding for--it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who,at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave up before they even got started."
..."I don't want to scare you," he said, "but I can very clearly see you dying nobly, one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause."
...'The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.'"
..."you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them--if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."
..."educated and scholarly men, if they'r brilliant and creative to begin with--which, unfortunately, is rarely the case--tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end."
..."Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and, maybe, what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suit you, aren't becoming to you. You'll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly." [Salinger explored and tried on a number of the world's religions and philosophies, including Yoga, Christian Science, Edgar Cayce and Scientology.]

One teacher kicks the boy while he's down; another tries to understand and help him. As archetypes, Spencer and Antolini have something to teach us. We've all seen them. Salinger's held up the mirror. Let's hope some teachers recognize their reflection.

It's clear the teacher wants to help Holden and gives him some inspiring advice, but if it's tainted by some animal lust to exploit the boy in a hyper-vulnerable state, then it's entirely different. But there's no compelling evidence of that. Stroking or patting Holden’s head is not a molestation, but it could have been an exploration for something further. Even today, a woman can stroke a boy's hair and people think she's being motherly. But let a man breathe on a child and it's interpreted differently.

It was taken that way by Holden, confusing and alarming him, but not traumatizing or Holden would not have kept the Stekel quote.

Here's  the text:
“I woke up all of a sudden. I don’t know what time it was or anything, but I woke up. I felt something on my head, some guy’s hand. Boy, it really scared hell out of me. What it was, it was Mr. Antolini’s hand. …he was sitting on the floor right next to the couch, in the dark and all, and he was sort of petting me or patting me on the goddam head. Boy, I’ll bet I jumped about a thousand feet.
‘What the hellya doing?’ I said.
‘Nothing! I’m simply sitting here, admiring—‘
‘What’re ya doing, anyway?’ I said over again. I didn’t know what the hell to say—I mean I was embarrassed as hell.
‘How ‘bout keeping your voice down? ‘m simply sitting here—‘
‘I have to go, anyway,” I said—boy, was I nervous! I started putting on my damn pants in the dark. I could hardly get them on I was so damn nervous. I know more damn perverts, at schools and all, than anybody you ever met, and they’re always being pervert when I’m around.’”

Holden misjudges Antolini and runs away from the only person who has so far understood his crisis and is compassionate enough to try and help.