A Russian blogger who now lives in California shared the following assignment that her daughter had been given in a Californian school (the link is in Russian):
When the students were reading A Catcher in the Rye, one of the assignments was to write a letter of an imaginary psychotherapist to Holden’s parents about the symptoms of 17 real psychiatric diagnoses that the students were expected to find by analyzing the text of the novel. The list of the diagnoses taken from the DSM was included in the assignment and contained, for example, the obsessive compulsive and bipolar depressive disorders.
I know this blogger and can assure you that she is a scrupulously honest person. She wouldn’t have invented this. So now I’m kind of confused and a little terrified. Do such schools really exist? Never again will I wonder why our students arrive in college in a state of such grievous ignorance.
I also want to propose an activity of our own where we diagnose the bizarre teacher who gave this assignment according to the DSM which s/he obviously likes so much.
Clarissa's Blog 
How old were the students? This is conceivably an OK assignment for a 12-th grade class in psychology, if the teacher is having trouble engaging students. It is ridiculous for anyone younger.
LikeLike
I think the girl is 16. But diagnozing a literary character?? On the basis of such a useless creation as the DSM?? Egregious.
I forgot to mention that this was English lit class.
LikeLike
oh jeez.
I’ve always felt that high school english classes focus too much on drawing characters into boxes, but this is just absurd.
I find this especially offensive because this is the first book I ever read that truly, truly changed my life. A lot of people in my high class felt the same way, and I think it can be a very powerful, especially for high school students. I’m appalled that they’re going to be focused on ‘what’s wrong’ with Holden and the other characters, instead of actually thinking about the text.
LikeLike
This is a novel that inspired generations of people all over the world. For instance, the number of Latin American novels that rewrite it and draw their inspiration from it is huge.
Holden is completely normal, which is why so many people identify with him. He is simply a teenager, and a pretty great one, too. Telling students that he is a psychiatric patient with 17 disorders is a crime against those students.
LikeLike
Why does Holden appear as a character in a book if he is not out of touch with reality?
LikeLike
Everybody has their own reality. That’s what makes books possible. Of course, the kind of teacher described here wouldn’t be able to realize that.
LikeLike
Yes, that was my point exactly.
LikeLike
This is a teacher of literature whose students then come to my literature classes. I’m not surprised that they say “we hate literature courses.” I’d hate them, too!
LikeLike
Definitely a psychiatric analysis of literature is antithetical to literature. I encountered one such book whilst writing my thesis. It was strange because it performed a kind of psychoanalysis on the author, which if the criticisms of his attitudes, etc. had been attended to, would have resulted in there being a beige, conforming citizen, rather than a writer.
I think most people don’t think too deeply about the nature of honesty in writing, or creativity. Both make you vulnerable to criticism for nonconformity to a certain idealized state of good citizenry, which is to silently acquiesce to societal norms without questioning them. To speak out and to write is naturally going to open anyone to criticism.
The one critic who didn’t quite understand this made mention that it was wrong for the autobiographical subject to make his mother speak in a way that implied she was casually knowledgeable about sexual matters. One ought to refrain from doing that, this critic seemed to say, since mothers ought not to be portrayed in that way.
This is an example of how many people use psychoanalysis as a way to diagnose pathology. The author’s attitudes were not normative towards his parents, therefore the author’s writing is to be deemed pathological and not meaningful.
The facts can easily get discarded in this process of diagnosis and moral condemnation. The author’s mother, after all, was engaged in prostitution to make ends meet, by his own account. What is so wrong in portraying this, if it is true?
LikeLike
“. It was strange because it performed a kind of psychoanalysis on the author, which if the criticisms of his attitudes, etc. had been attended to, would have resulted in there being a beige, conforming citizen, rather than a writer.”
– This kind of literary criticism was, indeed, in vogue a while ago. The good news is that this only existed for a very short time and has been ridiculed viciously since then.
“The facts can easily get discarded in this process of diagnosis and moral condemnation. The author’s mother, after all, was engaged in prostitution to make ends meet, by his own account. What is so wrong in portraying this, if it is true?”
– A student created a whole completely spurious story about a writer’s mother (whom this writer never even mentioned) on the basis of the author’s texts. I was horrified. Now, in my instructions on how to write an essay, I always include “Do not psychoanalyze the author.” I guess I’ll know have to add “. . . and the characters. And the prof. And each other. And yourselves.” 🙂
LikeLike
I guess it means the teacher’s pastime is to map the DSMV onto her students?
LikeLike
That’s a scary thought.
LikeLike
How is this sort of uninformed psychobabble anything to do with English or literature? Really, if I were a teacher the last thing I’d want to remind my high school students of would be the existence of the DSM and I certainly wouldn’t want to encourage them to use their teenage brains to play psychiatrist on even a fictional character. High school these days seems to already be a hotbed of dysfunctional behaviors. I can see it now, the class bullies will start in with “I know, let’s diagnose the class outcasts!” Doesn’t the teacher know how delicate the psyche of some kids are, and rumors that they are “schizophrenic” or something can push them over the edge? Not to mention there are tons of kids who have been diagnosed and are in therapy and/or on medication. The last thing they need are classmates on a power trip because they got an A for “diagnosing” Holden Caulfield as OCD and now think they are Dr. House.
LikeLike
Good point! This is yet another reason why getting students to assign diagnoses to anybody is very very dangerous. If anything, students need to be told that one needs to study for a very very long time and get a bunch of degrees before diagnosing anybody with anything. But even then you cannot diagnose literary characters.
LikeLike
Oh high school English teachers: Nobody knows quite how to ruin a good book for you like they do. It took me two college courses on British Literature and a lot of episodes of Star Trek: TNG with Picard quoting his plays before I could rediscover the joys of Shakespeare after high school English mangled him.
LikeLike
I hated literature in high school and would have laughed at anybody who would have told me I’d be a literature prof one day.
LikeLike