I read Catcher in the Rye by JDS when I was in first year university before my first hospitalization that year. I don’t remember exactly what I thought about it at the time, but I do remember being impressed by the thoughts and behavior of Holden and the symbolism of his odd idea of catching children running through a rye field before they fall off the edge of a cliff. As time went on I thought about it being about schizophrenia and it very well could be but i dont think assigning a diagnosis is important. I thought for a time that the book was against psychiatry with the protagonist or hero ending up in the hospital after what an adolescent reading the book would consider a fun adventure by someone with edgy thoughts. But the fulcrum of the book seems to be this catcher symbol which I interpret as being psychiatry or other related institutions. That the hero of the book who the reader becomes by taking on his perspective when reading has this dream I think the author wants the reader to in a way have this dream too. There have likely been countless psychology graduates in the decades since this book was published that read the book as adolescents and came to know this story as their first written depiction of mental illness.
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I’ve never read it, but it sounds interesting
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I read it in high school and it left an impression on me.
But now I don’t remember much about the story.
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Try a rereading of the book.
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