"Lipton's Journal", Mailer's unpublished 105,000-word diary of self-analysis (written over four months while experimenting with marijuana), also contributed to the essay's genesis. The journal documents "his insights challenge some of the dominant ideas of Western thought", specifically the dualisms that Mailer saw within every individual, like that of the saint and the psychopath. Mailer had planned to use the insights from "Lipton's Journal" in a series of novels which he ultimately never wrote, but he did incorporate some ideas from the journal into "WN". Mailer summarizes these ideas in one of the journal's last entries: