Caulfield, Holden - Confessions

I checked in at the clinic before 9:00 in the morning, noticing a new patient waiting for me in front of my office; wearing a red hat. At first, I couldn't remember who it was until I glanced at him once more and recognized that it was Caulfield! As soon as I got my desk prepared, I called Caulfield right away. "Good morning, Caulfield! How are you doing?" I said. "Good, you?" he replied. "Great!" I smiled.

Second meet ups with my patients always call for some personal and private confessions in their life.As I explained to Caulfield about what this appointment is going to be like, he kindly approached me first with a very kind voice by expressing everything that he has in mind. I was very glad he wasn't like my typical patients that are too shy to talk about their lives.

He confessed about his friend and this one girl he likes who has been seeing each other lately. He sounded jealous since he isn't able to talk to this girl named Jane. Jane Gallegher was the girl he spent the last summer playing tennis and checkers with and golf, too. Caulfield was really positive as he describes his moments with her and Jane herself. I can even remember him saying, "I got old Jane Gallegher on the brain again, I got her on, and I couldn't get her off" (pg. 76). It was really nice seeing a patient that cheerful when talking about their life.

A moment of silence came after he finished talking about Jane. "What's wrong?" I asked. "Nothing... I just remembered my family." Caulfield said. I got curious and so I asked him how was his family doing. His tone changed from being so cheerful to the opposite. He mentioned his brother, Allie. Allie is a left handed baseball player who has poems all over his hand written in green ink. It sounded interesting to me and so I asked him, "Why? What for?" And he said, "He wrote them on it so that he'd have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up at bat" (pg. 38). But then I found out that Allie died from Leukemia. Caulfield also compared himself to Allie who is a really intelligent person, fifty times more intelligent than he is, according to him. I didn't want Caulfield to feel more depressed and begin underestimating his abilities in other fields in life, so then I just changed the topic and asked about his school and his friends.

From what I can sense, Caulfield isn't really interested talking about his friends in the dorm. He just talks about how he's always alone in the dorm in the weekends where others are out to visit their families or out to have some fun or either asleep.He also stated that one time, he felt really sad and alone, not hearing any noise from the corridor, noises from other rooms through the walls or anything, which may also be the cause of his complication pertaining to the lack of communication in his environment and other concerns.