The Neurotic Personality and the Insane Society – >The Catcher in the Rye< Character Analysis [神经症人格与病态社会 – 《麦田里的守望者》人物心理分析], Master thesis, English Language and Literature, Northwest Normal University, Xi’an Shaangxi, China [application of Fromm's theories to art].

  • 杰罗姆•大卫•塞林格(Jerome David salinger,1919-)是美国当代著名的>盾世<作家之一,他迄今为止发表的唯一一部长篇小说《麦田里的守望者》在美国战后文学中被誉为>现代经典<;他的另外三部中短篇小说集为《九个故事》、《弗兰尼与卓埃》、《木匠们,把屋梁升高;西摩:一个介绍》。他的作品使他被公认为战后另一类型小说的代表人物,具有严肃、自由而又趣于神秘主义的独特写作风格。他的作品集中反映了五十年代美国青少年那种对社会事物既不能撒手不管,又不愿参与的矛盾心理,从不同角度对社会的各方面提出了批评,在美国有广泛的影响。小说以主人公,十六岁的霍尔顿•考尔菲尔德自述的形式回忆了他因成绩太差而在圣诞节前夕被潘西中学开除后在纽约三天流浪式生活的经历。本文把霍尔顿•考尔菲尔德作为美国青年的写照,探究霍尔顿的内心世界。内心的矛盾与冲突是小说《麦田里的守望者》主人公霍尔顿•考尔菲尔德的典型特征。因其复杂性与矛盾性,使得这部小说成为二十世纪文学界的难解之迷。本文选取主人公霍尔顿•考尔菲尔德的神经症作为切入点,在卡伦•霍妮和埃里希•弗洛姆的心理分析理论的指导下,探究了主人公霍尔顿的内心世界,并追溯了以其为代表的美国青年内心矛盾与冲突的本源——他们所处的时代的社会、文化矛盾,为小说及作者的歧义性提供了一种新的心理学阐释。 本文主要由正文四个章节和结论五个部分组成。其主要内容如下:本文第一章是导论。这一部分包括两个方面的内容:第一,介绍了作者杰•代•塞林格的生平和他的写作生涯。其目的是为了从塞林格的生活细节中寻找一些他的创作主题和创作技巧来源,从而更好地理解他的作品。第二,介绍了塞林格的主要作品——《麦田里的守望者》的主要内容和它在战后美国文学中的地位及其作用。《麦田里的守望者》发表之后,评论界的文章不计其数,褒贬不一,但赞扬居多。随着《麦田里的守望者》的出版,塞林格几乎立刻被认可为二战后最重要的美国小说家之一。可以说,塞林格的《麦田里的守望者》不仅从艺术上得到了肯定,而且从社会学的角度也得到了认可,它可以帮助青少年增加对生活的认识,也使成年人对青少年增加了了解,消除代沟。本文第二章简要介绍了本文研究的理论指导——卡伦•霍妮、埃里希•弗洛姆和埃里克•赫•埃里克森的心理分析理论和关于神经症的论述。作为精神分析学的文化学派的成员,他们都认为神经症起源于文化缺陷。同时他们的理论也各有侧重:霍妮详细论述了神经症的形成极其机制,弗洛姆对资本主义文化缺陷进行了分析,而埃里克•赫•埃里克森则强调人格发展中的同一性理论。第三章是论文的主干部分,本章对《麦田里的守望者》主人公霍尔顿•考尔菲尔德进行了心理分析并探究了以其为代表的美国青年精神病态的根源。这一章分为两大部分。第一部分介绍了主人
  • As one of the famous >reclusive writers< in the United States, Jerome David Salinger gets high reputation after World War II. His only novel >The Catcher in the Rye< is regarded as a >modern clas-sic< in post-war American literature. This novel, together with Nine Stories, a collection of his short stories, and his novelettes >Franny and Zooey<, >Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Sey-mour: an Introduction<, makes him a representative of novels of a new kind. His stories are both mysterious and rigorous with their own characteristic style. Salinger’s works reflects the inner conflicts of American adolescents after World War II and have great influences on Americans. - The story told by sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield, the hero and narrator of the novel, is focused on what Holden has experienced in his three-day odyssey in New York after he is expelled from Pency Prep around Christmas for his bad grades. Equipped with Karen Horney’s and Erich Fromm’s psychoanalytical theories, I plan to make a journey into the inner world of the protagonist in The Catcher in the Rye. My thesis proposes that the main character in the novel – Holden – is a neurotic owing to the insane cultures he inhabits. - The present thesis includes four chapters and the conclusion. The main contents are as following: Chapter I is introduction, which involves two parts. The first part is the introduction to J. D. Salinger’s life and career, whose purpose is to find out, from some of the details about Salinger’s life, the resource to the themes and skills in his writings so as to better understand them. The second part is the introduction of Salinger’s main book – The Catcher in the Rye, that is, the main story and its social status and role in post-war American literature. After the publication of The Catcher in the Rye, the critical reviews were numerous and mixed, most of which were positive, and Salinger himself soon gained an acceptance as being among the most significant post-World War II American novelists. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is not only accepted artistically, but also is confirmed sociologically, and it may help adolescents enlarge their knowledge of life and help adults improve their understanding of adolescents so as to get rid of generation gap. - In the second chapter, a brief introduction to the psychoanalytical theories of Karen Horney and Erich Fromm is made. As key members in the cultural school of psychoanalysis, they both hold that it is the cultural defects that cause neurosis. Then concerning the neurotic formation and mechanism, Horney makes a thorough elaboration. As complementary, Fromm provides penetrating analysis of the cultural defects of capitalism and their effects on individual; Erik H. Erikson stresses his identity theory. - The third chapter is the main body of the thesis, which is the study of the world of Holden. It consists of two parts. The first part displays Holden’s living surroundings – the insane society (including his family, the prep-school, and the society), which lays the foundation for the later analysis of the other part. The second part attempts to analyze the psychology of the main character in The Catcher in the Rye and the causes of his mental insanity. Holden Caulfield, the protagonist, is diagnosed to be a neurotic of self-effacement, aggressiveness and detachment, which originates from the defects of the American culture and society at that time. His neurotic personality can be manifested in his anxiety, hypertension, self-contradiction, neurotic need for love, and self-idealization and the loss of the real self. - The fourth chapter analyzes social and cultural codes and adolescent crisis in the world of Holden Caulfield. First, Holden’s world not only embodies the rebellious character of American adolescents in postwar American culture, but also reflects the obsession caused by the pressure of postindustrial society among these adolescents, as social individuals. With the development of postindustrial society, American character has changed from the purely individualistic and inner-directed one to that of designing a certain mode for the development of individuals. The American prep school, which to a large extent has replaced the role of the family, is serving as an institution to educate, monitor, and socialize the offspring of the middle class. But Holden is deeply skeptical about it and has uncovered the cruelty of competition under the mask of fair play. Holden is the very product of the time when rebelling these social and cultural cods, and the world of Holden is the real depiction of a subculture under this specific socioeconomic condition of American society. Second, in the world of Holden, this spiritual obsession has also reflected the adolescent crisis existing in American society, which is manifested in adolescents’ understanding of love and death. - The last part is the conclusion, in which the whole thesis is generalized and summarized. And this part also points out the significant importance of Salinger’s creation of The Catcher in the Rye and his depiction of the world of Holden. His works act as a kind of therapy for both his own neurosis and the social neurosis. Writing provides the way of realizing his idealized self and of curing his neurosis. [Author’s translation]

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Metadaten
Author:Wanbing Wan
Document Type:Dissertations
Language:Chinese
Year of first Publication:2006
Release Date:2016/09/29
Format:no download and copy possible
IdNo:Wan_Wanbing_2006
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Dissertations / Dissertationen
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Dissertations / Dissertationen
Licence (German):
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