Holden Caulfield, the main character in Catcher in the Rye, suffers from a Madonna/whore complex, which means he can only see women in two ways; as perfect and innocent or as dirty whores, with no middle ground. According to psychiatrists, this disorder can be caused by excessive bonding between the mother as a child or, on the contrary, by a lack of bonding, which leads to looking at the loved one as a mother figure, while no one else can meet these standards. (Speyer) Holden's experiences in this novel reveal this problem to us, as he can't seem to deal with women at all. Even in the moments when he is horny and wants to have intercourse with a woman, he finds it impossible because they are too perfect to get dirty or too dirty to console himself by doing something with them. This leaves Holden in a difficult situation that he cannot escape from, and throughout the novel we see that he cannot resolve this problem and cannot see both the good and the bad in women, as he can only focus on the extremes. Caulfield tells us about many people in this novel who were perfectly innocent, such as Jane Gallagher and her little sister Phoebe. Jane is Holden's friend from a few years ago with whom he had a relationship. All of Holden's memories of Jane, which are the only real indications of what she is like, paint her as an innocent girl who does childish things like "Leave him [the kings] in the back row" (Catcher, 33) while they played checkers. Holden never got anywhere with Jane sexually. The closest he ever came to such a thing was when he kissed her face after she broke down while telling Holden about her drunken stepfather (Catcher, 78-79). This may be the reason for the way he views her, as she was the only girl he had ever met who was cute, attractive, and not interested in participating in sexual activities. All the other girls in the novel (minus Phoebe) are shown by Holden as "sleazy" or uninteresting, someone he wouldn't like to be with. The other girl that Holden considers the epitome of innocence is Phoebe. He sees Phoebe as smart, funny, and naive, even as we see that she sees much more than Holden believes she should. She sees through Holden's lies about Pencey and we see that she is much more mature than we were initially told by Holden..