A Lacanian Reading Of Holden's Psychological Dilemma

The Catcher in the Rye portrays the mental disturbance of an adolescent who can not reconcile the reality with his ideal. Holden, the protagonist, recounts his story from a psychoanalytic ward. It seems that this novel, with a central character who is in the midst of an identity crisis and who has demonstrated so many psychological symptoms, is destined to elicit psychoanalytic readings.Equipped with Lacan's theory about the three registers of the human psyche, this thesis focuses on Holden's mental development during his two-day adventure in New York and is intended to find out the fundamental reason for his mental disturbance.First, Holden is entrapped in the Imaginary Order with his idealized vision of childhood. He forms an Ideal ego to be a catcher in the rye by seeking identification in the image of the other. And his younger brother Allie, who epitomizes the perfect child prodigy, serves as his ideal image. Holden clings adherently to his narcissistic ego, which continues to exert influence on his later psychic development.Confronted with the adult world, Holden feels strong threats elicited by the Name-of-the-Father to his sense of integrity gained in the Imaginary Order, and his specular image is shattered. In a symbolic sense he is castrated, which is reflected in his fighting with Stradlater, who becomes the signifier of Phallus. This intrigues his sense of lack or loss. Afterwards, Holden enters the Symbolic Order. But under the lingering effect of his imaginary and narcissistic ego, Holden begins his journey to search for innocence coupled with a desire to maintain the original wholeness without a feeling of lack. But his desire in the Symbolic Order can not be satisfied and the lack can never be filled. Under the law and the prohibition of the Name-of-the-Father Holden becomes a split and alienated subject. Wandering between the Imaginary and the Symbolic, Holden unconsciously longs for the Real to regain the original completeness and wholeness. But the Real is inaccessible except in moments of birth and death.In the end, being tortured among the three registers of human psyche (his narcissistic, idealized mirror image formed in the Imaginary Order is dismantled; his desire for innocence cannot be fulfilled in the Symbolic Order; his wish to return to the Real to regain fullness cannot be realized, either), Holden has a mental breakdown and is put in an asylum to be psychoanalyzed. From the above analysis we can see that the fundamental cause of Holden's psychic dilemma lies in his obstinate attachment to his Ideal ego in his psychological development.