From pp 109-110 of J.D. Salinger’s other masterpiece:

“I don’t know,” he said. “It seems to me there must be a psychoanalyst holed up somewhere in town who’d be good for Franny — I thought about that last night.”  [Zooey] grimaced slightly.

“But I don’t happen to know of any.  For a psychoanalyst to be any good with Franny at all, he’d have to be a pretty peculiar type.  I don’t know. He’d have to believe that it was through the grace of God that he’d been inspired to study psychoanalysis in the first place. He’d have to believe that it was through the grace of God that he wasn’t run over by a goddam truck before he ever even got his license to practice. He’d have to believe that it’s through the grace of God that he has the native intelligence to be able to help his goddam patients at all. If she got somebody terribly Freudian, or terribly eclectic, or just terribly run-of-the-mill — somebody who didn’t even have any crazy, mysterious gratitude for his insight and intelligence — she’d come out of analysis in even worse shape than Seymour did. It worries the hell out of me, thinking about it. Let’s just shut up about it, if you don’t mind.”

COMMENTS

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3 responses to “Psychoanalysis and the Grace of God in Franny and Zooey”

1. Christopher says:

   03/17/2011 at 10:19 am

   Amen

   Reply
2. fitz says:

   03/17/2011 at 1:16 pm

   F&Z saved my faith about 10 years ago.

   Reply
3. Margaret E says:

   03/18/2011 at 2:24 pm

   F&Z was HUGE in restoring my faith, too…

   Reply