Still another possible theme intrigued me to no end, but in order to discuss it I must revert back now to Freudian psychology in order to explain it. Perhaps I can refer to two other things, also, to explain it. The seeming relationship of this man’s feelings while in the underground to psychopathic personalities and to religion. As I wrote I drew upon these two concepts very heavily, for they seemed related to me. Perhaps their being regarded as alien to each other depends upon where they are found.

I’d like to go into detail here on this point, for in the writing of The Man Who Lived Underground, this kinship of insanity and religion intrigued me more, perhaps, than anything else. As I wrote page after page I was reminded of many psychiatric case histories of schizophrenic personalities. More and more, as the story progressed, I felt the writing to be a good emotional description of schizophrenia. The symptoms were unrolling as I wrote; I was not trying in any way to describe schizophrenia; it seemed that the very nature of Fred Daniels’s situation made such descriptions flow from the materials. First, I noticed that Fred Daniels was withdrawn from the world; second, that he suffered a loss of contact with reality in a hard and sharp sense; third, that there was a gradual disintegration of his personality. Yet, while noticing this, I also noticed that this whole idea of a man withdrawing from the world had a striking similarity to the life of my grandmother, who, in her religious life, was certainly withdrawn from the world as much as anybody has ever been withdrawn from it, as much as anyone can live in this world and not have anything to do with it. And yet, here I was expressing all of this in what I hoped would be terms of art. I felt that there was or must be some relationship between psychiatry, religion, and art. Just what that relationship was or is, I don’t know. I only report that I felt that such existed. Indeed, I can add another branch of human thought: philosophy. How these things link together is something I’ll try to search for as the years roll by and maybe they’ll form the subject of yet another book.

I’m not trying to say or suggest that every work of art proceeds out of some deficiency of personality, or out of some maladjusted personality, or out of the fact that a personality is trying to compensate for deficiencies; I think that the relationship is more subtle and obscure than that. Because of the lack of clarity on the part of most critics, scientists, or if you want to call them psychoanalysts, the failure to make that relationship clear has been the cause of a lot of confusion on the subject. For example, there are some books on psychology that intimate that anyone who expresses himself in art is to be counted among the maladjusted.

Now, my grandmother was surely a sane woman and I think that a judgment as to her sanity can be arrived at on the most academic basis, that is, she was adjusted to her environment, despite the fact that, in my interpretation of her religious personality, I know that she was withdrawn from the world. I do not think that one has to examine my grandmother’s thought processes to arrive at the conclusion that she was sane; she lived a hard life and she coped with every problem that confronted her to the satisfaction of her neighbors, children, authorities, and other associates. She reared nine children, and, being sensible, she had a very modest aim in launching them into the world: keep them out of jail and keep them healthy. Well, that modest aim might seem to some like a very, very little thing to strive for, but in the harsh southern environment to raise nine Negro boys and girls and to keep them alive and out of jail in a land where they are challenged each and every day, is no easy accomplishment.