Historical Figures: Baruch Spinoza and Robert Crumb

Baruch Spinoza was born on November 24, 1632, in the Jewish quarter of Vlooienburg in Amsterdam, to a family of Sephardic merchants who, during the persecution of the Spanish Inquisition, went into exile in Portugal. The Sephardim were Marranos: Jews forced to convert who, in public life, professed Catholicism but continued to practice Judaism clandestinely within the family. Some of them, like the Spinoza family, emigrated to the Netherlands to openly practice Judaism again.

Spinoza was born and died amid wars: the first, the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648), took his family to new lands, and the last, the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678), shaped his political and ethical thought. We are faced with a family history of persecution, exile, rejection, and alienation—components that could translate into isolation, disengagement, and lack of belonging in an individual. Although these feelings accompanied Spinoza, he managed not to be dejected by them, channeling them through his thinking.

There is little known about Spinoza's life, and even less about his childhood, due to the discretion of his community and the solitary life he adopted. At the age of seven, he entered Hebrew school, the Talmud Torah, where he remained until he was eighteen. There, he learned Hebrew (the non-Spanish language spoken within the Jewish community), the Old Testament, the Talmud, the Kabbalah, ancient Jewish philosophers, and business studies. At the same time, between the ages of ten and fourteen, he began to work in the family business, where he learned Dutch and Flemish. His mother tongue, Portuguese, was also spoken in the family.

Very early on, he encountered illness and death up close: at the age of six, his mother, Ana Débora, died of a lung disease; in his adolescence, his older siblings, Miriam and Isaac, died; and by the age of twenty-two, his stepmother, Raquel, and his father, Miguel, had passed away. It was then that, along with his brother Gabriel, he took charge of the family import-export business (including loans to arms dealers), which had considerable debts.

Spinoza was not a great businessman, but he did what he had to: he worked, paid his bills, collected his clients, went to the gay synagogue, and followed the community's rules. This

suggests an automatism with schizoid traits: complying only to fulfill duties quickly, assuming burdens with resignation and imperturbability, simply because life is as it is.

Expulsion and Freedom

Under the influence of his father, who questioned many beliefs, Spinoza began to question the rituals of religion, superstition, and hypocrisy. As a young student who knew the Old Testament in Hebrew by heart, "he disagreed with his teachers; he did not accept the medieval life of the Jews, nor the religious and social phenomena of their past." He was "clearly petulant, and his wit sometimes annoyed his teachers." However, he was seen as a promising individual within the community due to his integrity and piety.

Spinoza questioned the Judaic view of a God in the likeness of man and the concept of being a chosen people. He found faith in miracles untenable because it contradicted natural laws, an idea shared by a group of advanced Jewish scholars, including the most liberal rabbi, Menasseh Ben Israel (1604–1657).

He maintained exchanges with non-Jewish friends, such as Dutch liberal-Catholics, Quakers, and Mennonites from the world of commerce. Around the age of twenty, he became a disciple of Francis Van den Enden, a former Jesuit, freethinker, doctor, polyglot, Belgian poet, and philosopher, who was executed in France in 1674 for his atheist and republican ideas. With him, Spinoza learned Latin, Greek, rational philosophy, theology, medicine, science, mathematics, history, and politics. Spinoza now openly expressed his thoughts, and the Jewish community began to react.

Although the name Baruch (or Benedictus) means "blessed," Spinoza was cursed by his community. The authorities of the Jewish court, the Muhammad, offered him money to recant, but Spinoza did not give in. On July 27, 1656, at the age of twenty-three, he was excommunicated for his ideas on the identification of God with Nature, the immortality of the soul, the origin of the Holy Scriptures, and the role of the State. "No one could approach him, nor read his writings. All the curses of the Law fell on him. For all practical purposes, Baruch de Spinoza had ceased to exist. He was just a ghost, something less than a shadow."

He then changed his Hebrew name from Baruch de Espinosa to Benedictus (Latin) or Bento (Portuguese) de Spinoza. He donated his inheritance to his brothers, keeping only his parents' bed, where he had been conceived and they had both died. It was a ledikant, a bed with a canopy and four columns, "a warm and isolated island that he always carried with him, until he, too, died on it."

He was one of the philosophers who fought the most for freedom of expression and religious tolerance. The anathema was a liberation for Spinoza, allowing him to quietly dedicate himself to philosophy—it was ideal for his character. He believed that freedom implies distancing oneself from everything and everyone because being with others is confusing and overwhelming, and it's easy to get lost. Alone, however, it is easier to concentrate, and thought has no limits. While there may be a fear of rejection, this can be triggered unconsciously to achieve full independence: "The high need for autonomy is an understandable result of abandoning relationships. [...] The individual needs to be able to get by without external aids."

According to the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza was condemned with the greatest severity "because he rejected penance and sought a break on his own. [...] Instead of penance, Spinoza wrote an Apology to justify his departure from the Synagogue." This is a sign of his desire to break with everything, even to free himself from the burden of having to be a merchant and provider. According to González, Spinoza emerged from the family economic crisis and the expulsion from his community—an experience that can be glimpsed in his Treatise on the Reform of Understanding (1661):

"I certainly saw the advantages that honors and riches procure us, and I also saw that it was necessary to renounce them if I wanted to give myself seriously to this new purpose. I came to the conclusion that even if the supreme Happiness consisted in honors and the acquisition of Money, Sensuality, and Glory only constitute obstacles when they are sought for themselves and not as means to other ends."

Typical E5 traits such as self-exclusion, rejection, isolation, and pathological detachment are evident in Spinoza. The expulsion from the synagogue marks the starting point of his return home. Hell has already been lived; now begins the way out. Part of his hell was the schizoid trait of being torn between his family life as a Jewish merchant and his life as a freethinking philosopher. Spinoza was torn between his daytime, exoteric merchant life (even enriching himself indirectly from the forced labor of slaves) and his nocturnal, esoteric life of the spirit. Spinoza considers leading a merchant's life a "great obstacle," since money was an uncertain (false) good. "The wise lack riches, not because they cannot obtain them, but because they do not want them." (González, 2013, p. 11, citing Letter XLIV, Spinoza, 1671).

Being rejected by his community, detachment is transmuted into virtue, as he decides to detach himself and liberate himself for a greater good, which will be beatitude. To earn a living, he dedicates himself to polishing lenses for microscopes and telescopes.

Spinoza does not break with the religious milieu without also breaking with the economic one, abandoning his father's business. He learns the carving of crystals, becomes a craftsman, and a philosopher-craftsman equipped with a suitable manual trade to grasp

and follow the orientation of optical laws. He worked and meditated in silence for endless hours. [...] Spinoza polished and thought, worked the glass, and gave shape to his ideas. He molded them and also polished them until he gave his philosophical system the balance and transparency of a diamond.

This office may have accelerated the death of the philosopher.

Out to the world: The daughters of his tutor, Van den Enden, the freethinker who believed in free love, tutored the students. The eldest, Clara María, was Spinoza's Latin tutor, and he fell in love with her. She "knew ancient and modern languages, was a poet, a student of philosophy and mathematics" (Delahanty, 2005, p. 120). Spinoza wanted to marry Clara María, but she got engaged to Kerkering, a German medical student who was a fellow student of Spinoza.

Clara María is the only known love in Spinoza's life. Although biographer Margaret Gullan-Whur proposes the hypothesis of a homosexual relationship with her friend, the merchant Simon De Vries, there is no proof of relationships with women. De Vries wished to bequeath his fortune to him, but Spinoza refused; in the end, they agreed that he would receive a pension of 300 guilders from 1667.

Perhaps due to the herem or Jewish ban, no one could approach him. With the Calvinists, it was also difficult because their religious rules did not accept marriages with Jews. In any case, Spinoza had something asexual, which is typical of the Self-Preservation 5, perhaps due to intellectual wandering, and even romantic, but if sex is not there, it is not important either. Here is a manifestation of the distance from the life of someone who does not understand the codes of courtship well; signs must be clear and distinct.

Spinoza had a great thirst for knowledge and discovered that his passion was writing and thinking; he had a library with one hundred and sixty volumes. Despite his circle of friends, he did not commit to any of them. If he did, he would lose the freedom to be himself and discover his own thinking.

Although Self-Preservation seems to be the deepest aspect of the philosopher—reflected in his relationship with commerce and money and as a family provider—his second instinct, the social one, helps him get out into the world. He does not do this through the sexual instinct, but through the circle of friends and acquaintances with whom he shares intellectual and philosophical interests.

Rijnsburg, 1661-1663: In 1660, Spinoza was the victim of an assassination attempt by a religious fanatic. Some sources say that only his cape was torn, which he kept reminding himself of: "thought is not always loved by men."

What defines Spinoza as a traveler is not the distances he travels but his ability to frequent furnished pensions, his absence of ties, possessions, and properties after his renunciation of the paternal succession. In Rijnsburg, he stayed with his friend, Herman Homan, a chemist and surgeon of the Protestant Arminian sect, persecuted by the Calvinist official church: "It is possible that Spinoza sought a 'retreat' in the small community; a refuge in the style of the mystics." There, in a back room, he set up his workshop to polish lenses.

Here begins his most prolific correspondence, which extends until 1676, a year before his death. Judging by the tone of his correspondence, he was more benevolent with simple people and less patient with his equals. Apparently, he could tolerate modest fools with ease, but not the other kind. Five-character traits are seen in his cards, such as communication from the intellect, secrecy of the more private elements and his emotions, little patience with those who should understand him, and greater benevolence with those who do not.

The only known correspondence where he reveals his feelings is an epistolary exchange from 1664 with his friend Pieter Balling, who wrote to him following the death of his young son. Balling tells him that he had had a precognitive dream. Spinoza is affected and shares a dream of his own with a leprous-looking slave from Brazil. Although Spinoza analyzes his dream, he is not clear with his regret and seems disconnected. However, he does know how to interpret the feelings of his friend, confidant, and empath. According to González, in this episode, Spinoza's unconscious was seized by the guilt of the slavery of his time as a merchant—a subject he never dealt with explicitly in his political writings.

In this period, he also wrote the aforementioned Treatise on the Reform of the Understanding (1661), a posthumous and incomplete work, but substantial for understanding his philosophy. The beginning of his writing marked a spiritual path and self-transformation. The work is mainly an exhibition of meditations, where philosophy is applied through a precise method to achieve true knowledge of Nature and, therefore, of the human being. This led him to write his Ethics, which takes the philosopher to a dimension of internal work. Completed in Voorburg in 1675, despite his efforts to publish it, it would only appear posthumously, due to the risk that his ideas about God entailed.

Voorburg, 1664-1669: In 1664, Spinoza moved to Voorburg, a suburb of The Hague, where he lived until 1669, in the house of the painter Daniel Tydeman.

In 1665, he began writing the Theological-Political Treatise, where he wondered why humans are so irrational, proud of their own slavery as if it were freedom, and why a religion—Calvinism in this case—invokes inspired love, yet leads to war. The book was published anonymously, but it soon became known that its author was Spinoza, who was again forced to leave, settling in The Hague.

In 1669, Adrian Koerbagh (1663-1669), a Dutch scholar and writer who was a friend of Spinoza, wrote a Spinoza-style philosophical dictionary, for which he was arrested and executed. Thanks to his closeness to De Witt, Spinoza managed to escape safely. Koerbagh's conviction and death affected Spinoza deeply, not only because of the personal loss but because they signaled the end of tolerance and freedom in the Netherlands.

The Theological-Political Treatise places Spinoza as one of the founding philosophers of Modernity. It shows his ability to get involved in a cause and his effervescence in the face of injustice.

Baruch was certainly a quiet and sick man, but he never sank into absolute isolation. His philosophy dealt with God but did not completely forget men.

The End: The Hague, 1670-1677: In 1672, the De Witt brothers of the Dutch republican party were assassinated. Spinoza took their side and wrote a violent pamphlet called The Last Barbarians. It is said that he intended to paste the pamphlets on the walls himself but was dissuaded by friends and locked up by Van der Spijk. They surely saved his life.

It is a constant in Spinoza to reject and be rejected by a community, as opposed to defending his own principles. Despite living through life-or-death situations, he seemed a prudent and cautious man; even his signature always ended with the Latin word Caute! Spinoza had told us that every man should think what he wants and say what he thinks, but not so fast, not yet. Be careful. Watch what you say (and write).

In the Five character, especially in the Self-Preservation character, there is a lot of care and hypersensitivity in the treatment and the way of expressing oneself. On one hand, there is the concern of harming and being harmed. On the other, there is the conviction of maintaining a cordial treatment because there is no need to harm or be aggressive. There is a difficulty with aggressiveness and giving oneself space in the world. A human being who goes through life feeling that something is wrong inside may build a fantasy where everything they do will cause harm; and if they do, they may get harmed in return and die. "Men are enemies by nature. My enemy is the one I have the most to fear and from whom I must guard myself the most."

Much of what is thought remains secret, going unnoticed. The invisibility and secrecy confer mystery to the Self-Preservation 5, with its fragile appearance and, nevertheless, a stubbornness with its convictions, which it will maintain internally even if it does not manifest them.

Such characteristics in Spinoza are made explicit in his refusal of offers that go against his principles or hinder his freedom. For instance, in 1673, he rejected a chair at Heidelberg, which had been recommended to him by the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. He was offered

a full annual salary and guaranteed absolute freedom of thought, as long as he did not abuse it 'to disturb the publicly established religion.' Spinoza weighed the offer very seriously for about six weeks before declining it with a polite letter to the intermediary.

This letter shows Spinoza's determination to maintain his independence and freedom, even at the cost of giving up material security that he lacked. A snippet worth quoting:

"I think, first of all, that I will stop promoting philosophy if I want to dedicate myself to the education of youth. I also think that I do not know within what limits this freedom to philosophize must be maintained if I do not want to give the impression of disturbing the publicly established religion; because the divisions do not arise so much from the burning love of religion as from the diversity of human passions or the desire for contradiction, with which all things are often distorted and condemned, even if they are said correctly. And as I have already experienced when I led a private and solitary life, much more will be to be feared if I rise to this degree of dignity."

Spinoza led a peaceful domestic life in The Hague and was interested in people, despite his introverted character, receiving multiple visits. In the winter of 1676-1677, his health began to fail. His doctor, Dr. Schuller, predicted death, and the philosopher prepared himself by examining his material and burning some writings, such as an incipient translation of the Bible into Dutch.

Spinoza was buried in the New Christian Church of Spuy, where a new curse fell upon him: that of the Protestant preacher Arolus Teumann, who had the following inscription placed on his tombstone, which he had prayed for years:

"He despises Spinoza's Benedictus, to his grave. Here lies Spinoza. If his word cannot be buried, may the plague of the soul never completely devour him. [...] He has never seen the most horrible monster, hell."

This kind man was hated by many, his works were banned, and he had to publish anonymously and falsify data from his publishing places to protect his life. In Romanticism, his conception of nature resurfaced. Today, he has become one of the most beloved philosophers for his philosophy of lasting happiness and joy. According to Russell, Spinoza "is the noblest and kindest of the great philosophers. Intellectually, some have surpassed him, but ethically he is supreme" (p. 218).

Habits and character

Spinoza had an unusual way of thinking among his contemporaries. Being a withdrawn man who liked solitude, he was characterized by a kind and considerate treatment. He

retired early and led a frugal life, with no possessions other than his bed. He spent hours secluded in his room, writing, reading, or polishing glasses, sometimes spending three months without leaving the room to solve a philosophical problem. He led a quiet life in which passions did not dominate any situation. Spinoza did not oscillate between happiness and sadness or anger, but always stayed very close to the center. Everything indicates that he applied in his life the norms he recommended in the Ethics.

He wrote at night, by candlelight, the thoughts elaborated during the day. After a process of incessant reflection, he would go down to the dining room to talk with the other guests, indulgently and casually, smoking a pipe and occasionally drinking a beer. With his slender, graceful body, long face, somewhat sallow and pale white complexion, sad black eyes, and fragile health, he needed little from life, like a typical the Self-Preservation 5.

Spinoza represents the sorcerer who shares secrets with only a few: "He entrusts himself to a group of friends [and] invites them to keep their ideas secret, to distrust foreigners"; "Spinoza was the center of that fabric of almost secret relationships that met to talk about science and to read the new philosophy of Descartes."

The philosopher lived an intellectual love towards God, manifested in almost mystical experiences of fusion with the Universe. These experiences are reflected in his ethical thought and his knowledge of the world through the essence of things (entities). This is precisely what the Enneagram of Holy Ideas refers to when it speaks of the Holy Omniscience and Holy Transparency of E5. Here, the parts are a network that makes up a whole. It is not isolated, but there is a deep link between the different elements that make up nature, the universe, the cosmos, or God. This experience allows us to be omniscient, to see clearly and distinctly, to observe everything as it appears without judgment, that is, with transparency: "When we understand it, we are totally at peace with our past." This is what Spinoza's phrase sub specie aeternitatis refers to, "under the aspect of the eternal."

Love and kindness create a polarity in Spinoza with rage, which manifests itself openly as indignation at political injustice. Trait 5 anger and indignation can turn into suppressed rage and contempt for existence. Behind that exterior, neutral and almost ghostly temper of the schizoid lies a lot of disconnected passion, which Spinoza knew how to channel through denunciation and ironclad ideas.

This is the secret side of Spinoza. Behind that calm, withdrawn, unapproachable, and courteous man, a combative personality struggled to come to light. Throughout his life, there are symptoms of a passion that overwhelmed him and threatened to consume him: the adjectives he uses to disqualify his intellectual adversaries frequently amount to insults; his contempt for common people; the things he said about the rabbis and Kabbalah scholars. However, he always tried to control that subterranean violence and live according to the ideas of Ethics, seeking imperturbability and self-sufficiency.

In Delahanty's interpretation, the search for loneliness and isolation was a consequence of being orphaned early.

There is, in the fundamental wound of the Self-Preservation 5, a rejection of life, of existence; there is no desire. The cave is the human archetype of the darkest place: If there is light, only shadows can be seen that can deceive; however, it can be shelter and solace, like a womb. It is life and death at the same time.

Damasio wonders how Spinoza could have been a happy and satisfied man, considering that his life lacked the elements we associate with satisfaction: riches, health, and honors. One answer is that self-knowledge is activated when the experience of death, suffering, smallness, and finitude is strongest. "Spinoza was happy. His frugality was not a tactic. He was not playing an example of sacrifice for posterity. His life and his philosophy probably merged around the ripe old age of thirty-three." Spinoza understood that affections are natural to human beings, starting from a self-knowledge of one's own emotions, where they come from, and understanding their mechanics, accepting them as they are. That is the foundation of this man's health.

The Small and The Large, The Invisible and The Visible

"Remind yourself that you only live a tiny part of the life of all of nature. You are part of an immense context." – Jostein Gaarder

Spinoza's thought makes clear the smallness of the human being before Nature, which has an order; a system where everything works perfectly, which in Spinoza's philosophy is equated with God ("Deus sive Natura"/"God or Nature"). Nature has no judgment; it goes beyond right and wrong, good and evil; it just manifests. And human beings are just a tiny part of that great gear. Spinoza's simple natural philosophy approaches the Greek idea of eudaimonia, the good demon: understanding one's own demons and coexisting with them allows for a state of well-being and bliss.

To obtain freedom, understanding must be polished in order to think autonomously and for oneself and not become a slave to an ideological system. "Spinoza wanted to make himself a free man [...] carrying out his thoughts to the end and linking all the elements together."

To this end, humility, chastity, and frugality are necessary, no longer as mutilators of life, but as virtues that embrace and penetrate it. Spinoza did not believe in hope; he only believed in joy and vision. He let others live as long as they let him live.

Precisely one of the most obvious features of E5 is the yearning for freedom and autonomy. The only way to safeguard against a world interpreted as voracious is to hide within

oneself, since it is the only place where one is not reached and one is free, without the demands of the outside world.

Spinoza built a philosophy of serenity and happiness. For Russell, it makes sense that a person who has suffered and lost everything should have the consolation that they are only a small and invisible part. It can be added that, through loss and suffering, that deep contact with pain in the darkness of the cave, one is able to detach oneself from ties, beliefs, labels, and masks. Nothing is so important anymore, in a good way; you are just another passenger.

Robert Crumb

Robert Crumb is considered by many to be the greatest American cartoonist of all time. The "father of underground comics" created counterculture icons such as Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, and Devil Girl. His name was a strange foreshadowing of the character he was to develop. Crumb in English means "crumbs," which refers to a personality that is content with eating little, keeping the leftovers, and expecting nothing.

He was born in Philadelphia on August 30, 1943, the son of Charles V. Crumb, a combat illustrator who spent twenty years in the Marine Corps, physically and verbally abusive, and a Catholic mother, Beatrice, a housewife, probably manic-depressive, who reportedly abused diet pills and amphetamines. The marriage was unhappy, and the children were frequent witnesses to their parents' arguments.

Crumb himself succinctly describes his family of origin: "My parents came from very different cultures. My father was a farmer from Minnesota. My mother grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Philadelphia. [...] The Crumbs of Minnesota were fairly successful farmers. They worked hard and were very straight, strict, puritanical, and respectable. It would be unthinkable for them to be dishonest, lie, or cheat in their business dealings. My mother's family was more or less the opposite: urban, a bit lumpen, dissolute, alcoholics, degenerates, sexual oddities... All that.

They were both Catholics, but although neither was very religious, they sent our children to Catholic school, and we attended church regularly. They tried to be middle-class people. Honor, duty, and responsibility were what my father had. He had ceased being a farmer and had joined the army. He liked military life. It was elemental, simple, life or death. Postwar America was disconcerting to him. Culturally, my parents didn't get it. My father watched the fights and baseball on TV, read the newspaper, and nothing else. My mother was an indiscriminate reader of cheap film, romance, and detective magazines. They never read a book."

When my father came home to Philadelphia in 1947 after the war, it was very traumatic for me. I didn't like him. He was very strict and harsh with us and had a violent character. We were all afraid of him. My father used to say that he could easily kill a man with his bare hands. He was a trained assassin. His hot head would burst at any moment. When I was five years old, at Christmas, something happened. He unloaded his fury on me and scratched my collarbone.

The father liked the discipline of Catholic schools and the severity with which the nuns treated the children. Robert lived with a deep fear of God and typical Catholic guilt until the threshold of puberty.

"Actually, I tried really hard to be a good boy. I had strong Catholic guilt. At fifteen I was a very repressed boy, and then when puberty hit me, I was shocked: suddenly my sexual libido woke up with demonic intensity. Not knowing what to do, I couldn't deal with that at all. I became obsessed with girls."

Already at an early age, he shows his tendency to passivity, renunciation, and detachment, and another typical character trait: taking things too seriously...

"All my cousins were tough, smart farmers. They made fun of me because I walked around with my teddy bear. Well, at ten years old I was already a bit eccentric, and I just accepted that: I was 'weird.' I could even say that I liked being weird. I didn't know what was going on or what was happening. I was passive, maudlin, and lazy."

Robert was anything but popular in high school and felt alienated, treated like an outcast. He took refuge first in the Catholic doctrine and then in intellectualism to sustain that feeling of superiority that, although more accentuated in the other subtypes of the Es, is also present in the Self-Preservation one. As he himself says, in one of his comic strips:

"This childlike devotion to Catholic doctrine and practice gave me a smug moral superiority over other boys (boys were one thing, girls were another... distant, remote, another world!) Later, after having abandoned the church in favor of intellectualism, I had a new reason to feel superior."

It is the typical oscillation of this character between feeling like the lowest scum in the world and being gifted. In an interview, Dien explains this polarity:

"I had this screwed-up ego: on the one hand the narcissist (I'm this great artist) and on the other hand: I'm completely inept... The 'I leave my mark on this earth as a great artist' is as strong as the negative self-image."

Intellectualism distanced him from the real world and from his peers, whose judgment, despite his somewhat snobbish attitude, conditioned him to the point of being afraid of them. As he himself describes in a strip: "I had a deep and powerful reflex FEAR!!!"

And so, he confesses:

"In my early teens, I was traumatized by my unsuccessful attempt to participate in the vicious world of teenagers. I was shattered. I retired to my room. I stayed home and dedicated myself more to my art. I felt so painfully isolated that I swore I would take revenge on the world by becoming a famous cartoonist. I was very determined. At fourteen, I had already gone through the pain of adolescent alienation. I realized that I was a freak and that I wasn't going to make it with girls."

In this way, he evokes that time in 1994:

"When I was thirteen and fourteen, I tried to be a normal teenager, but I was an idiot. I tried to act as I thought they did. It was weird, so I let it be and became a shadow; I wasn't... People didn't even realize that I was in the same world as them. That freed me from the pressure to be normal."

And, in a BBC report scripted by himself:

"There may be something wrong with me. [...] Sometimes I think I have a deep genetic defect, some kind of mutation [...] I didn't turn out normal. [...] That's why I have all this resentment and contempt. Self-hatred is a motivating force in my work. I was so out of it, so alienated when I was young, that drawing was like my only connection to society."

And adds his second wife, Aline:

"When I met him, he never spoke, he just drew. He was catatonic, his only voice was his pencil. My mother thought he was retarded when she met him. He is more comfortable with people he has always known. [...] He becomes a bit more communicative, but still shuts up. It doesn't sound very natural conversing with someone you don't know well."

Crumb's personality was deeply wounded not only in his family but also in high school, where, totally unpopular, he developed a fixation on women with powerful thighs. One of the few pleasures of the male characters in his comics (many of them directly or indirectly autobiographical) is to straddle the beautiful buttocks of girlfriends, a literally autobiographical practice that Crumb repeated several times in public. Many of the regular characters in his cartoons are inspired by people he hated or missed from his high school years, and it could be said that his work is, in large part, an elaborate revenge, something very therapeutic for a character who introjects anger and resentment.

He is fine when he makes fun of himself, another characteristic of the Self-Preservation 5, in a series of strips that present him devoted to masturbation, revealing what lies behind his halo of intellectual superiority, and the consequent guilt:

"An inordinate part of my waking hours were spent like all those ignorant young men to whom I felt so superior: fantasizing about sex! The possibility that I was just like everyone else in this regard never even crossed my mind... I also didn't worry that I used most of my creative energies for masturbation scenarios... They were my own original and unique creations... But I was not, nor have I ever been, proud of this... On the contrary: immediately after cumming I experienced strong feelings of shame and self-loathing."

It is not uncommon for something that appears so dry, cold, and impenetrable—like the shell of conservation—to reveal a peculiar tenderness and sensitivity, once the right approach is found. For Crumb, it was listening to old music.

Back in school, I couldn't understand why girls liked those rough guys, and I didn’t... I was more sensitive and nicer, more like them... I felt hurt and cruelly misunderstood. He didn’t think those things mattered; he valued what was inside.

This sensitive part, usually buried deep beneath the impenetrable iron curtain with which this character isolates his inner world, sometimes emerges quietly with those he holds most dear. His brother Charles was the person he was closest to and the one who influenced him the most. He loved comics, and together they wrote many of the strips that Bob made as a child. A friend was with him when his mother called with the news of Charles’s suicide: "He acted like he didn’t care, but then I listened to him all night. He went up to his study and kept walking here and there until dawn."

In his interviews and public appearances, he is almost always smiling and irreverent with fate, as if to say, "Wow, my family is weird and crazy, isn't that funny?" It is as though he laughs to keep from crying. There is a moment in the aforementioned documentary when, speaking about his father, he sinks into a deep silence, and we can see how the endless sea of sadness he carries inside is reflected on his face.

After high school, Robert spent a depressing year at home, mostly drawing and talking endlessly about the meaning of life with Charles, who never left the house.

While still working at a greeting card company, Bob began drawing for Harvey Kurtzman’s Help, a magazine he had been a huge fan of for years. Kurtzman was one of the few "greats" who gave him sound advice on work, women, and life in general.

He once told me, "You should keep doing your own thing. Don’t be anyone’s helper. You are too eccentric and individualistic."

Advice that points to these two traits seems to hit the nail on the head. The Self-Preservation 5 is highly individualistic and distrustful. "Better alone than in bad company" could be his motto, and in his deep mistrust, he always feels "bad company" and prefers to do things alone.

He is so used to, and hurt and disgusted by, the continuous invasions of his "castle," of his living space, by people who seem well-intentioned and then exploit him, betray him, usurp his ideas, and make other people’s merits their own, that it is very unlikely he will be open to collaboration, except when he feels great esteem and admiration. Taking into account that, of the three loves of Claudio Naranjo, the admiring one is the least atrophied, the most accessible to the Five Self-Preservation type. Added to this is his misanthropy and his difficulty in perceiving himself as part of a whole, something greater.

In 1964, Crumb married Dana Morgan and soon entered into that feeling of oppression and the impulse to escape, to free himself from all ties, to owe nothing to anyone, with no obligations of any kind. Of course, guilt came... and a son, Jesse.

"I met a lonely, alienated, fat woman, and next thing I knew, I was married. She was as desperate as I was; the only thing we had in common was our desperation. I was trying to run away from my marriage, my job, and a value system that was unbearable for me. I had just turned twenty-one when Dana and I got married, and six weeks into our long honeymoon in Europe, I began to feel trapped. And to ask myself: 'Is this it? Is this my life until I get old and retire?' That's why I ran away from home in January 1967 to join the hippies; a much more exciting prospect. I was good at running away; it was one of my main talents as a young man. This character finds it difficult to assume the responsibilities of age."

That same night, "Hey, do you have room for one more?" I asked them. "Yes, of course! Come with us!" So, I jumped from the working world of Cleveland to the hippie mecca of San Francisco, with the clothes I was wearing and the money I had in my pocket. I just wanted my freedom... and to share in that free love that was talked about in the Midwest. I was selfish, I admit it. I treated women like toys. I played with their emotions as I did with their bodies!"

Claudio Naranjo used to say that, for certain types of character, therapy does not work or can only go so far. To go further, to break down hermetic and impenetrable personality structures, dynamite is needed! And Robert found it at a time and place where it was hard not to, even for such a strange and unsociable young man.

"I started taking LSD in Cleveland in June '65. Acid was never easy for me: horrible, nightmarish experiences and wonderful cosmic experiences, like the ups and downs of a roller coaster. I couldn't understand people who took acid to have a good time or to have

sex. It was my road to Damascus! It altered my way of drawing and why I drew. I stopped drawing from life. I lost concentration. It freed me from my ego for a short time. All my drawing came from within, a miraculous inner vision. It was the freest my subconscious has ever been in my life. The characters' heads were getting smaller and smaller, and their feet were getting bigger and bigger! It symbolized my state of egolessness. It was all so silly and so deliberately unintellectual..."

In 1967, he moved to San Francisco, but the psychedelic experiences and the emerging underground scene did not change his feelings of loneliness and exclusion, or his inability to flow, to integrate into a culture of which, ironically, he would soon become an icon. Why? Crumb himself asks this question in a kind of manifesto of the cosmic pessimism of the Self-Preservation 5, with its absolutely negative vision of the world.

"I have a huge ego and must resist the urge to present myself as a know-it-all. Some of the images in my work are scary because I am a timid and pessimistic person. I see the predatory nature of the universe, which can kill you easily and quickly, no matter how well you take care of yourself. I am a very negative person, and always have been. Reality disgusts me, horrifies me, and scares me. I cling desperately to the few things that give me any comfort, that make me feel good. I hate most of what passes for civilization. I hate the modern world. For starters, there are too many people. I hate the hordes, the crowds in your cities, with all their hateful vehicles, their noise, their constant coming and going meaninglessly. I hate cars. I hate modern architecture. All buildings built after 1955 should be torn down. I hate modern popular music. There are no words to express how its phony, pretentious, cocky assertiveness gets on my nerves. I hate having to deal with money, one of the most hateful inventions of the human race. I hate the mercantilist culture, in which everything is bought and sold. I hate the mass media and the passivity with which people submit to them. I hate having to get up in the morning and face another day of this madness. I hate having to eat, shit, maintain the body... I hate my body. I hate all the empty, false, and banal talk that goes on between people. Sometimes I feel suffocated and want to run away. For me, being human is, for the most part, hating who I am. When I suddenly realize that I am one of them, I want to scream in horror."

Success and popularity came soon, very soon, a circumstance that, together with the character's difficulty in setting limits and the complete absence of social skills, brought many difficulties to Crumb's life.

"I had no idea how to handle my new position in society. The truth is, I'm still figuring it out. I didn't want to become the cross-culture greeting card artist. It was then that I began to unleash all my perverse sexual fantasies. It was the only way to stop being 'America's most beloved hippie cartoonist.' And it worked. Snatch and Big Ass Comics got most of me out of the way in no time!"

"It's really radical; he does not compromise with this sick society and pushes his ideal of 'purity' to self-destructive limits. They offered him a hundred thousand dollars to participate in Saturday Night Live, only as a first number, and he rejected them in two seconds: 'Forget it, I'm not going to Saturday Night Live.' The Rolling Stones also wanted me for an album cover... a couple of offers like that; I said no. After a year of recognition and all that fame bullshit, I said to myself: 'Fuck you!' and I began to draw my dark side, everything that I had always hidden."

We can say that he takes advantage of success, but not in the way one would expect. Rather, he uses it to give free rein to his resentment toward humanity, to his cynicism:

"I started bringing more and more of the darker side of myself into my comics just to be like, 'Okay, now that they love me, let's see if they can handle this.' That's when I did those offensive grotesque sex comics."

At the time, he manifested that characteristic addiction to work and the ability to disconnect from everything else, including basic and biological needs, when a Self-Preservation 5 is involved in something that motivates him.

His weakness and inability to set limits came to the fore when his first wife, Dana, signed the television rights contract for Fritz the Cat with Steven Krantz and collected $10,000 on the spot.

"Suddenly it seemed like the lawyers were speaking for me, and the guys were arguing about percentages and contracts, and all of that made me pretty queasy, but I thought, 'Wow, I must be really cool, if they think I'm a fizzy freak.' That was my problem: I swallowed it, I believed them, they were all my friends, they were going to help me, they loved me... I don't know, how could I know that they were going to swallow me and spit me out?"

In 1973, he divorced his first wife and moved in with Aline, with whom he had a daughter, Sophie, in 1981. This change seemed to give him a sense of responsibility and 'the jump' into adulthood.

Sexuality and the relationship with the feminine is, as we have been saying, a source of obsessions, compulsions, and problems, with repeated accusations of machismo, sexism, misogyny, perversion, and racism…