In his surrealist-meets-romance-meets-photography novel entitled Nadja, Andre Breton explores the shade of gray between his impoverished (maybe fake) lover Nadja and her sanity:
Treated in a private rest-home with all the consideration granted to the rich, suffering no contacts which might be harmful to her, but instead comforted at propitious moments by friendly presences, her preferences gratified as much as possible, gradually restored to an acceptable sense of reality - which would have necessitated the avoidance of all harsh treatment and an effort to induce her to recognize voluntarily the origin of her difficulties - I may be making a rash statement, yet everything leads me to believe that she would have recovered from her wretched state.I'm interested in this passage in order to explore the relationship between poverty and mental illness. Those in big cities are no strangers to the insane street dweller - the one who sits indian-style in a circle of pans with latent change cups and a sack of rags that used to be clothes. Society doesn't do much to clean these people up and give them a fair chance. But maybe they had a fair chance and ended up here (on the corner of St. Marks and 2nd avenue or 16th and Mission or you pick). Would they be saved if quarantined? What if that quarantine was separate from society, yet filled with wonderful, cutting-edge medicines and therapy? What if there were only friendly companions?
There are also excellent examples where the impoverished became so down-and-out and insane that they enter a new realm of rationality. Take mole people population from the film Dark Days. They built a satellite version of New York in the freedom tunnel (situated from Riverside Park down to 68th street). They seem so healthy and normal in a way. Houses are built. Dogs roam free. There's electricity, furniture and stocked kitchens with requisite hotplates. Many are honest and hardworking. These members refuse to fall into crime. Instead, they wake up early and collect cans for cash, finding little discarded possessions by trashcans along the way that they can use to pawn for a little extra cash. Their day-to-day life does have a routine, yet mental illness looms in the background.
The mole community underground might have swelled to as many as thousands, and over 90 percent of those found had had problems with drug addiction (in particular, crack). They built up a new world, yet something was off. They were constantly on-guard and distrustful of others that might come into their world. This is mostly a defense mechanism, though. I mean, who wouldn't run a little mental imbalance if they could be brutally robbed and destroyed at any point in time? That's the trouble with living in a lawless squatter society underground. That's the trouble with being poor.
The poor often have no way to fight back. With few possessions and even fewer places to call home, they don't get the chance to avoid those harmful contacts. They wander, float and try to avoid trouble. What if we set aside substantial funding to actually provide real housing for the really down-and-out? We could integrate them back in. Maybe we could give them some psychoanalysis, too. If we treated the poor like the rich for a few months, maybe they would come back into the world with a new, more balanced perspective.
Personally, after a long week where I'm running around to meetings, drinking, cutting deals, high-fiving and getting it done, I need a day or two to lay in bed. This is because the bed, privacy and warmth of a real home are protective. No one can get to me (unless they go up the fire escape, in which case my friend Louisville Slugger is waiting to greet them). Breton's predicament with watching Nadja collapse and turn more insane as she becomes poorer is an honest reaction to poverty in the early 20th century. It's more than a shame that we haven't come too far from this. The facilities are cleaner. Medicine is better. There are more doctors. But there are also more people, and my, do they wander with little or no destination.
