Insanity in a Sane World

Holden’s immaturity causes him many problems throughout the story. Although he is physically mature, he acts more like a child. “All of a sudden I

Mr. Antolini believes that Holden is still immature and still needs to realize his reality. Mr. Antolini says this he can see that Holden’s mentality/maturity level is holding him back in ife. Mr. Antolini can see that Holden is growing up, but not really changing. Mr. Antolini wants to help Holden because he can see that Holden is going

Holden’s parents establish a set of standards for Holden while he attends fancy preparatory schools. They want him to become successful and follow the footsteps of his father, “Lawyers are all right, I guess… All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot… Even if you did save guys’ lives and all, how would you know you did it because you wanted to, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer? How would you know you know you weren’t being a phony? The trouble is, you wouldn’t” (172). This shows his unwillingness to acquiesce, and follow the standards set by his parents and society. Holden continually gets kicked out of school, because he doesn’t want to live a meaningless life. He simply has no concern about making money or achieving the American Dream, he just wants to be complacent and live a happy life. Holden is essentially rebelling against what society has taught him that was most important; wealth and power. He has created his own set of principles, which is often the cause of his alienation from the rest of his peers. While attending Pencey Prep, Holden was forced into taking an oral expression class, that forced him and his classmates to standardize the way they think and speak in order to comply with the guideline set by their teacher Mr. Vinson (183). In almost every aspect of his life, he is being continually

Holden has very high standards for people in this society. He calls everyone a ‘phony’-meaning fake, not genuine or essentially anyone that's an adult. Before he left to go to New York, he visited his favourite professor,

In the story “On Being Sane in Insane Places” by David Rosenhan, an experiment was performed to distinguish the “sane” from the “insane”. Rosenhan’s experiment was “being sane in insane places”. In 1970 David Rosenhan a psychiatrist and eight perfectly healthy and sane “pseudo patients” fake their way in into psychiatric hospitals across the United States. Martin Seligman states “David just called me up and said, ‘are you busy next October?’ I said.

Oh, Holden. We can’t make up our mind between feeling sorry for him and telling him to just get a grip already. All he wants to do is connect with someone—anyone—but the boy has high standards. Very high standards. Standards so high that only a fourth-grader can live up to them. That’s why Holden Caulfield, suffers from depression.

Holden, like Willy, does not find what he needs in the people around him. The adults in Holden life are phonies who fail him. Like many confused teenagers, Holden looks up to his parents, but they let him down. Devastated by their son Allie's death, Holden's parents suppress their pain by smoking and drinking. Holden cannot talk to his parents, so he turns to Carl Luce, his old school advisor. Holden is confused and he bothers Carl with many sex questions, which aggravates Carl. Carl Luce leaves Holden because Holden behaves childishly. Holden then turns to his old teacher, Mr.Antolini. Holden can talk to Mr.Antolini; he tells Mr.Antolini what is going on with him. But like most people in Holden's life, Mr.Antolini disappoints him; Holden believes that Mr.Antolini tries to make a sexual advance on him. Although it is not a sexual advance, Holden thinks it is and feels more alone than ever. Now Holden cannot trust any adult in his life. Holden's disgust with adults depresses him because when he

Because of this, Holden doesn’t attain a strong, healthy relationship with his parents, causing him to go on a path of self-destruction. He has little control over his actions, which has caused him to get expelled from his school, and is now roaming the New York streets by his

Holden got kicked out of Pencey Prep boarding school and he doesn't even regret it because he mentions the place is full of “phonies”. He acts mature for his age only because he is very tall and doesn't affiliate himself with many people his age. Holden attempts to fit in with older people by flirting with older women, smoking cigarettes, having many drinks, and criticizing everything that surrounds him. His actions are absolutely mesmerizing because it is as if he has no care in this world. Likewise, he also seems to not worry about how his future will turn out. In this quote Mr. Spencer asks Holden if he even feels some concern for his future, “‘Oh, I feel some concern for my future, all right. Sure, Sure, I do." I thought about it for a minute. "But not too much, I guess. Not too much, I guess'" (Salinger 17). It seems as though that Holden doesn't have a distinct answer for anything. He is always unsure of what he is being asked by his teacher. Mr.Spencer shows concern for his future and is trying to teach him a valuable lesson. He wants to get him to realize that without putting in the effort, he will not achieve this dream. Holden never puts in any thought about his future. If he were to do so, he would not be failing subjects and getting thrown out of

On Being Sane in Insane Places is an essay written by David L. Rosenhan regarding experiments in which he and a team of others participated. These experiments were conducted in psychiatric wards of hospitals throughout the United States of America. In the experiments, a member of Rosenhan’s team would ask to be admitted on the grounds that they were hearing unfamiliar voices of the participant’s sex saying “’empty,’ ‘hollow,’ and ‘thud.’” (Rosenhan, 1973). All were easily admitted with the diagnosis of schizophrenia save for one, who was seeking admission to a private hospital, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a more desirable diagnosis. The team would then give only a falsified name and career; the truth about their pasts and relationships

Holden believed that “it’s a phony. [He] could puke every time [he] hears it”(Salinger 9). Using phony to criticize the the language Dr. Spencer uses. However, Holden's principal, Mr. Haas, “was the phoniest bastard [he] ever met in [his] life”(Salinger 13-14). Holden does not agree with the way that Mr. Haas acts towards people of different social status because as a headmaster of the school he should treat every parent the same but he did not.

and Mrs. Antolini’s house because he doesn’t want his parents to know that he is home early because they would easily be able to tell that he was kicked out of school. When he first arrived at the Antolini’s house, Mr. Antolini was talking to Holden and asking him questions to catch up on how he’s been lately. Holden tells Mr. Antolini that he is a moderate smoker, which is not to be true at all. We know that Holden is a heavy smoker because everytime he runs into a situation he tells us that he’s smoking a cigarett. Holden wants to come off as a smart and slightly innocent boy to Mr. Antolini, but we can tell he is most definitely not buying

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Today I will be informing you about who said this quote, how it relates to our lives, and

The narrator can be seen as a religious man as he believes in heaven and hell. By this assumption, it can be reasonably said that he believes in good and evil, and for many this is just as much part of reality as water. Sanity and reality are equally fluid as they are defined by the accepted beliefs of the population and can differ for many religions. To defined insanity, first the meaning of sanity must be defined and in turn one’s reality. A man's reality tells him right from wrong: this is his conscious and when he does something he knows is bad one get a guilty conscious.Because of his guilty conscious, which sounds like the old man’s heartbeat, the narrator is not insane.

Throughout of my life, the words “insane” and “insanity” is always connected to an asylum or a mental hospital. Parents always saying those people in those hospital are crazy or call it a crazy house, yet I never saw that. Insane is madness or craziness, making it gain a negative perspective over a few centuries and caused people to feel worse about themselves because being label for something they can’t control. While society think having a mental problem can be fixed, sometimes it can’t and it becomes a part of you for life. Through time, some parents can be oblivious to realize that it’s not a problem and cause their child to a doctor saying their child is sick or crazy, that they need