Schizophrenia in “The Man Who Lived Underground” according to “Memories of My Grandmother” (author’s essay) by Richard Wright (post 5)

In my previous four posts on Richard Wright’s classic African-American novel, Native Son (1) (search “native son”), I found that the protagonist, Bigger Thomas, has unacknowledged multiple personality (a dissociative disorder, not a psychosis like schizophrenia).

In contrast, the protagonist of Richard Wright’s novel, The Man Who Lived Underground (2), has schizophrenia (a psychosis), according to the author:

“I’d like to go into detail 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I felt the writing to be a good emotional description of schizophrenia…First, I noticed that Fred Daniels was withdrawn from the world; second, that he suffered a loss of contact with reality in a hard and sharp sense; third, that there was a gradual disintegration of his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from the world had a striking similarity to the life of my grandmother, who, in her religious life, was certainly withdrawn from the world as much as anybody has ever been withdrawn from it…[Although] my grandmother was surely a sane woman…that is, she was adjusted to her environment…[she] heard voices; she imagined things, too. I imagine that the reason no one ever called her crazy was that everyone who lived around her was acting more or less the same way. When I, in my childhood, told my grandmother that I could not see things or hear voices, I was branded the crazy one in the environment” (2, pp. 201-204).

1. Richard Wright. Native Son [1940]. New York, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005.

2. Richard Wright. The Man Who Lived Underground [written 1942] and Memories of My Grandmother [written 1942]. New York, Library of America, 2021.

Added same day: Richard Wright was an advocate for mental health services in Harlem (New York) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafargue_Clinic