Re: Try listening

Jim says
>I don't recall psychoanalysis as a discipline showing up in any of
>Salinger's work (that I've read) with any positive connotations.

Within the works concerning the Glass family, no. Especially, as Kim has
mentioned, Zooey exclamation "you know what THAT did to Seymour". This is a
remark made after Bessie suggests Franny go see a psychologist.
But there is a section in Catcher in the Rye that mentions psychoanalysis
with positive connotations.
It is when Holden meets Carl Luce for a drink. Luce is brilliant, someone
who Holden feels can shed light on the "big mess" he got himself into.
Besides being a student at Columbia, and a student of Eastern philosophy,
Luce has also accepted the benefits of psychoanalysis. His father is a
shrink, and Luce admits his dad "helped him adjust". It's not by any means
an endorsement, but it is surprising HOlden actually considers
psychoanalysis.
Clearly Salinger is against the psychological "overhaul" Seymour mentions in
his diary entries. But he does award Freud with the dubious moniker of
"poet" in Seymour: An Introduction, so there is room for argument here.

>Analysts are about as bad as literary critics, so far as I can tell, in
>Salinger's world -

No, I don't think they are THAT bad. Because, in some of Salinger's works
there is a redeemable quality to psychoanalysis-if and only if it is
practiced by the right person. Rarely is this the case, but in one of the
entries in Raise High The Roofbeam, Carpenter he describes a talk he has
with a Freudian. And during the conversation, one where the psychoanalyst
labels him a "perfectionist" Seymour writes he is "pulling for him." Does he
find merit in the shrink's perspective?
Of course, he also says he finds Rhea "unimaginably brave" , right?
Later Seymour describes literary critics, all of them, as feculent. He also
states, among other tragedies, they cursed Flaubert.
Analysts and literary critics are largely disliked by the Old Hermit, both
threatening to fall in the wrong hands.

Cordially,

J Gedsudski

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Received on Fri Mar 7 19:53:39 2003