Best Minds: How Allen Ginsberg Made Revolutionary Poetry from Madness

May 03, 2023

YCSC Grand Rounds April 11, 2023

Stevan Weine MD, Director, Global Medicine; Director, Center for Global Health; Professor of Psychiatry - University of Illinois at Chicago

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00:00And thank you all for joining us on this
00:02wonderfully sunny, warm spring day.
00:04I hope you all had a very nice long weekend,
00:07and it's a pleasure to
00:09welcome you to Grand Rounds.
00:11And just as usual, we'll have a
00:13little preview of next week's speaker.
00:15So next week we'll welcome Doctor
00:17Henick Tmar and from Harvard
00:19University to the Child Study Center.
00:21So as many of you all know,
00:22Doctor Tmar helped set up the
00:25Generation Rotterdam cohort
00:28and has published extensively.
00:29On looking at the perinatal and
00:32early life and contributors to child
00:35health and development integrating
00:37genomic methods and imaging methods.
00:39So please do join us in person
00:41for his presentation next week
00:42and of course we'll make the
00:44presentation available via Zoom also.
00:46And now bringing us to today's speaker,
00:47it's our pleasure to welcome back
00:50to Yale and Doctor Steven Vine who
00:52completed his residency fellowship
00:54and he was a faculty member here
00:57at Newhay at Yale University.
00:59Now Doctor Vine could.
01:00We have many presentations today.
01:02In fact,
01:02we'll probably have to have him back to
01:04talk about his really interesting work,
01:06looking about looking at rehabilitation
01:08and reintegration of women and
01:10children who've experienced an
01:12extremist context and violent context,
01:14working in Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Jordan,
01:18amongst other countries.
01:19And we could hear about his work
01:22on medical education,
01:23developing curricula for global
01:25health for medical students.
01:27But today we're going to hear a
01:28little bit of a different talk,
01:29fascinating talk about his under his
01:33relationship with Allen Ginsberg and
01:35looking at the role of mental illness
01:38and on the creative process for one
01:40of the most celebrated and perhaps
01:42controversial and poets of his generation.
01:45And so please join me in welcoming Dr.
01:47Wine to at the Child Study Center.
01:56Thanks very much.
02:03Thanks. Hello everybody.
02:04Thanks for coming out today.
02:06Hi, Linda, nice to see you again.
02:10So I'd like to dedicate this talk
02:14to the memory of Donald Cohen,
02:16legendary teacher and researcher,
02:18clinician leader in child mental
02:21health and it's really a great.
02:23Honor for me to be able to present
02:25this work to this community here.
02:28I also want to thank the Department of
02:30Psychiatry for giving me the Seymour
02:32Lustman Award in 1989 for work on Ginsburg
02:35and other friends who have support.
02:39Friends and teachers who supported me
02:41along the way, including Daniel Levinson,
02:44Ira Levine, Donald Faulkner,
02:48Tamra Razzi, Nancy Olson.
02:51And her cat, Billy Blake.
02:55So there's I'm supposed to give,
02:58like, a warning.
02:59There's some profanity in this talk.
03:01We're going to listen to Allen Ginsberg
03:04read some poems and one of the slides.
03:07There's some audio on video.
03:08One of them's a little bit loud,
03:09I'll warn you when that comes.
03:12There's also some controversy in the
03:16air about Allen concerning some issues.
03:20Related to children,
03:21and I'll I'll mention that briefly,
03:23but I'm prepared to talk a
03:24lot about it if if one of you
03:26wants to ask me about it.
03:30So like many of you,
03:31I'm attuned to the issue of a potentially
03:35damaging impact of adversity and
03:38trauma during childhood and how.
03:42Adults, young adults,
03:44teenagers somehow managed to find meaning
03:49and strength in those experiences and
03:52help them get through those experiences.
03:55Today, I'm going to talk about
03:57the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg,
03:59and who Allen Ginsberg suffered because
04:01of his mother's serious mental illness,
04:04her prolonged confinement,
04:06and her injurious psychiatric treatments.
04:10That those also led to Allen's
04:12own mental health struggles and
04:14psychiatric hospitalization.
04:16However, instead of being
04:18crushed by these experiences,
04:19he found a way to transform
04:22them into poetry and advocacy.
04:25Now, how poetry is written,
04:27you know, is really a mystery.
04:29But I tried to get as close as I
04:32could to seeing the path that he
04:34traveled and the work that he did.
04:36Especially earlier in his
04:38writing career and in his life,
04:40and how he got to his masterpieces,
04:42Howell and Cottish,
04:44I was very fortunate to be
04:47Privy to materials that hadn't
04:49been seen by anybody else,
04:51which Allen himself gave to me,
04:54and that allowed me to develop a
04:56more accurate and comprehensive
04:58picture than exists in any of the
05:01three published biographies or in
05:04the critical writings on Ginsburg.
05:06This includes a perspective on some
05:09important flaws of Allen as a person.
05:15I also got a more complete picture
05:17of Naomi Ginsberg, his mother.
05:19This is an image of Naomi and her son,
05:22other son Eugene, Allen's brother,
05:25who's an attorney, taken in 1950.
05:28Six a week before she died
05:31outside of Pilgrim State Hospital,
05:33this image was given to me by Lyle Brooks,
05:36the son of Eugene, who lives in New York.
05:40And so Naomi was amongst the cohort of
05:46people who disappeared into state mental
05:49hospitals in the 1940s and 50s without any
05:52hope of of getting better or getting out.
05:55And I was also able in my research,
05:57to travel back in time to an earlier
06:00era of psychiatry in the 1940s and
06:031950s and to understand, you know,
06:06both the the successes and the
06:08challenges and the tragedies of
06:10psychiatric treatment back then.
06:12So in 1986,
06:13this all began when I was a medical
06:16student at Columbia University and I
06:19wrote a letter to Alan out of the blue,
06:21and he called me a few days later.
06:24And we became friends,
06:25and he gave me access to his
06:28psychiatric records at Columbia,
06:31to his mother's psychiatric
06:32records and to his archives,
06:35which at that time we're
06:37not at Stanford University.
06:39And all of this culminated in best minds
06:43in the book that has just come out.
06:47So let's begin with.
06:49The poem Cottish for Naomi Ginsburg,
06:52which was published in 1962 and is
06:56considered to be his greatest masterpiece.
06:59So he began writing this poem in Paris
07:04following Naomi's death and then he
07:07completed the writing in a 40 hour
07:09marathon writing session on East 2nd St.
07:13and at which time he said the
07:17poem burst from my hand in a day.
07:20Cottage is a really long poem.
07:22It's 36 pages.
07:23It takes a couple hours to
07:25read the whole thing.
07:27But I want to play you an excerpt.
07:42Actually, you know what I'm going to do?
07:44Take that. I'm going to,
07:44I'm going to read something 1st and
07:47then I'm going to play you an excerpt.
07:48So in part one of Howell,
07:50Alan is walking on the Lower East Side
07:55and he's following Naomi's footsteps,
07:57and here's what he says.
07:59As I walked towards the Lower East Side,
08:01where you walked fifty years ago,
08:03Little girl from Russia eating the
08:05first poisonous tomatoes of America,
08:08frightened on the dock,
08:09then struggling in the crowds of Orchard St.
08:12Towards what? Towards Newark?
08:14Toward Candy Store?
08:16First homemade sodas of the century?
08:18Hand churned ice cream in backroom on
08:21musty brown floor boards toward education.
08:25Marriage, nervous breakdown operation,
08:28teaching school,
08:29and learning to be mad in a dream.
08:32What is this life?
08:36This elegy Kaddish told the story of
08:39Naomi's life and madness in great detail,
08:42and it showed how modernity nearly
08:45murdered a woman's soul and that of
08:48her son and his Ginsburg's use of
08:50the long line in this poem is very,
08:53very striking.
08:54And there's a really interesting kind
08:56of stop start rhythm to the poem,
08:59which draws from many different
09:01sources that Allen had took taken in,
09:04including Thelonious Monks music that
09:06he was listening to to Ray Charles,
09:11to to the the cottish prayer and
09:14and other sources and cottish bore
09:17witness to a world soulful of crises,
09:20trauma and contradiction that
09:22it drove an innocent young.
09:24Immigrant woman who is his mother to madness.
09:28It really gave birth to the idea
09:31of madness as a social diagnosis,
09:35which later became picked up by Rd.
09:38Lang.
09:39In developing his whole theory,
09:42Cottage said things about madness that
09:44had never been said before in public.
09:47Documenting its destructive potential,
09:49but also finding alongside passion,
09:51love, spirit and insight.
09:54Now we'll listen to a little part of it.
10:00Oh glorious muse that bore me from the womb,
10:05gave suck first Mystic life,
10:07and taught me talk and music.
10:10From whose pain had I first took vision,
10:13Tortured and beaten in the skull?
10:16What mad hallucinations of the dam that
10:19drive me out of my own skull of the
10:23Zeke Eternity till I find peace for
10:26the old poetry and for all mankind so
10:30that you could hear there.
10:32Alan is saying that he's taking his
10:35mother Naomi as his muse and being
10:38inspired by by her whole experience
10:43and. Pat, what's really
10:45interesting to me about cottage?
10:47I think it must be one of the earliest
10:50and most compelling first person family
10:52narratives of serious mental illness.
10:54And I think it taught a whole generation
10:57of people how to commit to mourning
10:59and how to reckon with family illness
11:01and death on a whole new level.
11:04And it expresses open heartedness
11:07to a mentally illloved 1.
11:10And in doing so, at the time 1961,
11:12I think it is a way in which it might
11:15be even more revolutionary than Howl,
11:17which which was all about solidarity
11:20with a mad flock of of of brothers.
11:23This is very much about a woman,
11:25a woman's story,
11:26a woman who experienced a lot of
11:28trauma and adversity in her life,
11:32so.
11:36Let's now lost
11:37in grace down word,
11:38let's just listen to a few
11:40more words from Kottish.
11:41This is from Part 2 of Kottish,
11:43which is 13 pages, which really
11:46tells the story of Naomi's mental
11:49illness and its impact on the family.
11:51And I'll just play a short excerpt.
11:53This was written Allen reading it
11:56in 1995 at the Knitting Factory.
11:59In the East Village in New York,
12:01where he was preparing for an MTV special,
12:04that never happened because
12:06he got liver cancer and died.
12:09But this was like the rehearsal tape,
12:11new shock for her electricity following the
12:1540 insulin and Metrosol had made her fat,
12:21so that a few years later
12:22she came home again.
12:24We'd much advanced and planned.
12:26I waited for that day.
12:28My mother again to cook and play the piano,
12:30sing at mandolin lung Stew and Stanka
12:33Razen and the communist line on the
12:36war with Finland and Louie in debt,
12:39suspected to be poisoned money,
12:40mysterious capitalisms,
12:43and walked down the long front
12:45hall and looked at the furniture.
12:46She never remembered it all.
12:48Some amnesia examined the doilies
12:50and the dining room set was sold
12:54the mahogany table 20 years love.
12:56Gone to the junk Man.
12:58We still had the piano in the
13:00book of Poe and the mandolin
13:02though needed some string dusty.
13:04She went to the bedroom to lay down
13:05in bed and ruminate or nap, hide.
13:07I went in with her, not leave her by herself.
13:11Lay in bed next to her shades
13:13pulled dusky late afternoon Louie
13:15in front room at desk waiting
13:18perhaps boiling chicken for supper.
13:20Don't be afraid of me,
13:21because I'm just coming back
13:23home from the mental hospital.
13:24I'm your mother. Poor love lost a fear.
13:28I lay there, said I love you, Naomi.
13:30Stiff next to her arm. I would have cried.
13:34Was this the comfortless lone union?
13:37Nervous.
13:37And she got up soon Was she ever satisfied,
13:41and by herself sat on the new
13:43couch by the front windows,
13:45uneasy cheek leaning on her hand,
13:48narrowing eye at what fate that day,
13:51picking her tooth with her nail,
13:53lips formed an O. Suspicion.
13:56Thoughts. Old, worn vagina.
13:58Absent side glance of eye.
14:00Some evil debt written in the wall,
14:03unpaid and the aged breasts
14:05of Newark come near.
14:07May have heard radio gossip.
14:09Threw the wires in her head,
14:10controlled by three big sticks
14:12left in her back by gangsters in
14:15amnesia through the hospital.
14:16Caused pain between her shoulders,
14:18into her head.
14:19Roosevelt should know her case, she told me.
14:22Afraid to kill her now that the
14:24government knew their names
14:25traced back to Hitler.
14:27Wanted to leave Louie's house forever.
14:31One night. Sudden attack.
14:32Her noise in the bathroom
14:34like croaking up her soul.
14:36Convulsions and red vomit
14:37coming out of her mouth.
14:39Diarrhea,
14:39water exploding from her behind
14:41on all fours in the toilet.
14:44Urine running between her legs.
14:46Left retching on the tile floor,
14:48smeared with her black feces, unfainted.
14:51At 40, varicose, nude,
14:54fat, doomed,
14:55hiding outside the apartment door
14:57near the elevator calling police,
14:59yelling for her girlfriend Rose to help,
15:02once locked herself in with razor and iodine,
15:05could hear her cough in tears at the sink,
15:07Lou broke through the glass
15:09green painted door.
15:10We pulled her out to the bedroom.
15:12Then quiet for months that winter
15:14walks alone nearby on Broadway,
15:17Red Daily Worker broke her.
15:20So I I played that so that you
15:22get a sense of the poetry of it,
15:25but also what Alan,
15:26as a young boy, experienced.
15:28He was basically the family
15:32caregiver for for Naomi.
15:34So let's talk about Naomi,
15:43OK? She was born in 1896 in the Jewish
15:48Pale between Saint Petersburg and Odessa.
15:52She came with her family to New York.
15:54They had a candy shop on Orchard Street.
15:57I gave a reading on Orchard St.
15:59a few steps away from that two weeks ago.
16:03One major discovery of my research
16:07was that Naomi was sexually molested
16:11by a female cousin and by a male
16:14border at ages 5-6 and nine,
16:16which neither Alan nor anyone else knew.
16:20And this is the first time I've
16:22said it in public.
16:24The family eventually moved to Newark,
16:27NJ, where Naomi attended grammar
16:29school and then Barringer High School.
16:32Then, at age 18,
16:33she had her first nervous breakdown,
16:35but she recovered. She became a teacher.
16:39She met and married Louis Ginsburg.
16:41There he is,
16:43and she didn't get admitted to the
16:46psychiatric hospital till she was 35,
16:48her first admission.
16:50Was at Bloomingdale's Hospital and
16:53then she had multiple several many
16:56year several year admissions and
17:00during these this time Allen was
17:02her principal caregiver and Allen
17:04would also ride the bus to go visit
17:06her in all of these hospitals.
17:10Fast forward to 1947, on April 24th,
17:151947 a feeble 51 year old Naomi Ginsburg.
17:20Entered the examining room at
17:22Bellevue Hospital in lower Manhattan,
17:24teetering on her feet and almost
17:28falling over.
17:29She made an opaque statement about being
17:32embroiled in a political situation,
17:35and she asked, Is there such a thing
17:38as outside spirits haunting you?
17:40Then she said that she had seen God,
17:42who is tall and strong and handsome,
17:45and God said.
17:46Have patience and keep saying to yourself,
17:49I don't care.
17:50I don't care.
17:51And so she did.
17:52Sometimes she jerked her head
17:54about on an imaginary access
17:56drawn perpendicular to the floor.
17:58The other time she threw her head
17:59onto her chest and let it hang.
18:01There.
18:02She hung her head because I can't keep
18:05trying to hold on to a happy thought.
18:08When asked about her husband,
18:10she said that's where the trouble started.
18:12Everybody knows my life.
18:13It's a case in history.
18:15My husband killed his brother and child.
18:17My husband is a well known poet.
18:19I left him four years ago.
18:20I got tired.
18:22We separated.
18:22His mother organized a gang to get
18:25something in America for the Jews.
18:26They went wild with killing.
18:28I was always a progressive,
18:29internationallyminded.
18:30She described the visions in which
18:34she saw God and heard his voice.
18:37And again, she said.
18:38All of a sudden a vision came
18:40to me when I first became sick.
18:42It said have patience, it comes to the needy.
18:45I was so happy.
18:46I tried to get him again and she also
18:50said that she can't endure the suffering.
18:53I feel as though I'm dead,
18:54but I am not dead.
18:58She was at the end of her rope
19:04and of course she was exhibiting
19:06many of the symptoms.
19:07That you would identify as schizophrenia,
19:09though I have some questions about that.
19:12News of her admission got back to Allen,
19:15who wrote in his journal,
19:16Naomi Bellevue, Radio back,
19:19etcetera, etcetera.
19:20Depression relief,
19:22but settling in sexual stasis again.
19:25From there, Naomi was transferred
19:27to Pilgrim State Hospital.
19:29After it opened in 1931.
19:31Pilgrim State Hospital quickly became
19:33the largest psychiatric hospital.
19:35In the world, it had a total of 13,000
19:38patients at the time that she was admitted.
19:41It's about 100 miles from
19:42New York On Long Island,
19:44Naomi would remain at Pilgrim
19:46State for the next several years.
19:48Not long after the transfer,
19:50Alan visited her and didn't write
19:52anything about the visit in his journal.
19:55When asked if her she had been glad
19:57to see her family on visiting day,
20:00she said.
20:00I feel sorry that they come
20:02and see this site.
20:06She also said,
20:07you know I'm deathly sick inside.
20:10I have tumors and ulcers.
20:12I rush my heart, it's not strong.
20:14Do me a favor and etherize
20:15me so my death will be easy.
20:18She gave a note to the nurse saying
20:20please kill me you you know you
20:23have my permission to do that.
20:25She wanted to die,
20:27she wrote to Alan and Eugene.
20:30Please write me, Alan,
20:31and tell Eugene to write me.
20:32I'm feeling well enough to read letters.
20:35Tell Eleanor, that's her sister
20:36to write for the love of Jesus.
20:39I don't know how I got this sickness.
20:40It's up to you to find out.
20:43Your loving mother Naomi.
20:44And then she also wrote to have
20:46visitors here as a godsend.
20:48Believe me,
20:48I keep your letter in my boson, Naomi.
20:52Here's what one of the letters looks like.
20:55Please come to see me in a hurry.
20:57One son call up the other son,
20:59tell Eleanor to come see me.
21:00I'm still alive and walking around,
21:03and there's many such letters.
21:08By November 11th, 1947,
21:12the psychiatrist wrote this progress.
21:16Note that she had not made progress
21:19despite multiple treatments of ECT.
21:22And so they. Decided to
21:24recommend a prefrontal lobotomy
21:28and they framed it around like she's
21:30difficult to manage on the ward.
21:32And that was one of the indications
21:34back then is make people more
21:36docile and manageable on the
21:38hospital or or in their home.
21:42So Allen returned.
21:43Allen had been thrown out
21:45of Columbia University.
21:46That's another story.
21:47Then he went to Dakar with the
21:49merchant marines, came back,
21:51and there's this letter waiting for him.
21:54Please be advised that your mother,
21:56Miss Naomi Ginsberg,
21:57was seen in consultation
21:58with the Assistant Director.
22:00It was decided her mental
22:01condition is serious enough to
22:03warrant a prefrontal lobotomy.
22:04If you're interested in more details
22:06in regard to this type of operation,
22:08it's possible complications.
22:09You can discuss this problem
22:11with the doctor on charge of the
22:13case on the next visiting day.
22:15In the meantime,
22:16we're including including this request
22:18if you want to sign it and send it back.
22:22So interestingly enough,
22:23when Alan gave me permission to
22:25look in his archives in 1986,
22:27I found this letter.
22:29And I remember, I'll never forget,
22:32you know,
22:32the evening that I showed Alan
22:34this letter in his apartment
22:38and imagined the how nervous I was.
22:42And you know, the kind of the courage it
22:46took to to show him this and then to.
22:49Absorb his reaction, of course.
22:51He said this is an extreme thing.
22:53Yes, I did it, they said.
22:55He said they told me that her
22:58shoot her head would literally
23:00explode if unless I signed this.
23:02So I did. But at the time in 1986,
23:05this was not public knowledge and so it
23:10was kind of a a bombshell for for me to
23:13hear about this as well Alan went or.
23:20The lobotomy was performed and
23:24Alan came home and wrote Alan
23:26Don't Die in his journal.
23:31This is an image of lobotomy,
23:33how lobotomies work.
23:34We could talk about that if you want.
23:40Now switch a little bit.
23:42By this time in his life,
23:43Allen Ginsberg was an
23:46undergraduate at Columbia College.
23:49And for three years he had been
23:51working with Jack Kerouac,
23:52William Burroughs and others,
23:54his buddies, to try to write
23:57what they called a new vision,
23:59to take in the world as it is without
24:01ordered, rational preconception,
24:02then create an entirely new
24:05order and consciousness.
24:07You understand what that means.
24:08I'm not sure I do.
24:09But.
24:09But, but they were trying
24:11and Kerouac was writing and
24:13Ginsburg was writing to get
24:15to this new vision Well.
24:20They were very much inspired by Rambo,
24:26who wrote As I come down the
24:29Impassable rivers, I felt no more
24:32the bargeman's guiding hands.
24:34And so there was a sense
24:36that we welcome crises,
24:38we welcome hardship coming into our
24:42lives because it's going to strip away.
24:45Bourgeois mentality and and
24:48conventional ways of thinking.
24:50And so indeed,
24:52Allen was embroiled in a crisis,
24:54and the crisis was his mother
24:56and his mother's hospitalization
24:58and lobotomy at that time.
25:01Now, you know,
25:02he had been writing kind of long,
25:04ponderous poems that weren't
25:06really going anywhere.
25:08But things kind of changed all of a sudden.
25:11He had also been interested
25:12in psychoanalysis.
25:14He thought psychoanalysis
25:15would help free his mind up.
25:17He and Kerouac were engaged in a joint
25:21psychoanalysis by William Burrows.
25:24William Burrows conducted the
25:26analysis in Burrows apartment that
25:28they they would lie there next to
25:31each other and tell their stories.
25:33Interesting, huh?
25:35Ginsburg used heroin, marijuana,
25:37Benzedrine to try to kind of
25:41loosen things up as well.
25:43And this was what was going on about
25:47the time when he signed the consent.
25:50And I understand that the the
25:53consent for lobotomy as a descent
25:55in the in the Ramboian sense,
25:58descent is acceptance.
25:59For so long he believed everything she said,
26:03Naomi said was true.
26:04But he had come to accept that he
26:06could not surrender himself to her.
26:09He had to accept that she was ill,
26:10that she required treatment,
26:12and that those treatments
26:14had serious side effects.
26:15Dissent is being cast into a
26:17new and unfamiliar territory.
26:19By signing consent and endorsing
26:21the doctor's authority,
26:22he pushed himself outside of Naomi's orbit,
26:26where he had spent most of his life.
26:28And dissent is risking her death
26:30and traumatizing yourself in
26:32the hope of making her better.
26:34For Ginsburg,
26:35dissent meant tying the intellectualized
26:37idea of the new vision with Madness's
26:41actual visions, including Naomi's.
26:44And it also meant putting complete trust
26:47in poetry to make up for life's let downs.
26:50So six months later,
26:52six months after signing consent,
26:54he starts to have his own visions.
26:58He was lonely, directionless,
27:00and despondent.
27:01He was living by himself in a sublet.
27:03Of his friend's place up in Harlem,
27:07there were a lot of
27:08this. This friend was a diff
27:10student at Columbia and had a lot
27:12of books on religion and Alan was
27:14reading all of those at the time.
27:16He had his visions.
27:17He was studying Cezanne to finish
27:20an incomplete class that he was
27:23taking from Professor Meyer Shapiro
27:26which would allow him to graduate.
27:27He rode the subway downtown and.
27:30Went to the Museum of Modern Art
27:32and he studied this painting,
27:34Cezanne's Le Stock.
27:35And when looking at this painting he
27:38noted he had the first experience
27:41of what he called slippage.
27:43Slippage like his mind was started
27:46to something started to happen
27:49to how he was seeing things.
27:51And then a few days later while reading
27:54William Blake's The Sick Rose at Home he had.
27:59The first of his visions,
28:01and he immediately thought that
28:05this was his reason for living.
28:07He thought he had seen God.
28:09He thought he had seen the light.
28:11He started telling everybody about them.
28:14Friends, people in bars,
28:17his father and.
28:19He wrote about him in journals.
28:21He started writing poems.
28:22He thought his job was now to
28:24be a visionary poet like Blake.
28:26And I'm going to write poems that are
28:28going to inspire this kind of change
28:30of consciousness in everybody and that,
28:32this and that.
28:34This indeed became the
28:36central mission of his life.
28:38These are some of the things
28:40he wrote at the time.
28:41I can't forget what I have seen,
28:43something dreamlike white
28:44art and ghostly about us.
28:46The unreal has become for
28:48me the roast real now.
28:50I have had moments of absolute valid,
28:51literal knowledge.
28:52I've seen the Nightingale at last.
28:57So he began writing poems that he
28:59thought would stand with Blake's
29:01Songs of Innocence and Experience.
29:03He wrote one poem called 2 Sonnets
29:05and this is just an excerpt from it.
29:07And he said I witnessed heaven
29:09in unholy time.
29:10I room in the renowned city am unknown.
29:12So he's saying I have seen I
29:15I'm a witness to the divine and
29:17and I want you to all see it.
29:20Two now,
29:20these 1948 Blake visions would
29:23be described many, many,
29:25many times thereafter,
29:26especially in a 1962 interview
29:29that he did for the Paris Review.
29:31And interestingly enough,
29:33all the biographies and critical
29:35writings about Ginsburg take this 1962
29:38interview as the description of the visions.
29:42But it's 14 years after the visions,
29:45and in that 19.
29:4662 Description He describes that he
29:49heard the voice of William Blake.
29:51But one of my other discoveries
29:53in my research is the voice of
29:55William Blake is not mentioned
29:56until at least 10 years later and
29:58mostly not until this interview.
30:00So what's going on in that interim period?
30:04Some there's something important
30:06happening about his struggling with
30:09that experience and his kind of
30:12retelling the story of himself over many,
30:16many years.
30:17So over the next period of time,
30:20the more Alan kept talking about
30:22visions and writing about the visions,
30:24the more he felt like he was losing,
30:26losing his mind.
30:27And he this is what he wrote.
30:29I'm ill. I've become spiritually or
30:31practically impotent in my madness.
30:33This last month, I suddenly realized
30:36that my head is severed from my body,
30:39and the sense of being on the
30:41brink of madness was in a lot
30:43of poems he wrote at the time.
30:45He was living with Herbert Hunky.
30:47Who later became a writer,
30:49who was a junkie and with a bunch of
30:52other junkies had a criminal gang.
30:54Again, he was trying to have his kind
30:57of dark Night of the Soul experience
30:59strip away all aspects of middle class
31:02existence and his Columbia education
31:04and and get closer to the spirit world well.
31:09They got caught in a drug bust
31:12and a one way like a car crash.
31:15Car turned over, police arrested him.
31:18It was on the front page of
31:20the New York Times.
31:21Hunky went to Rikers.
31:23Ellen got letters from Jacques
31:25Barzon and Lionel Trilling,
31:27who testified that he, Allen,
31:29had so much potential.
31:30So Allen was able to make a deal with
31:33the prosecutor to get admitted to the
31:35New York State Psychiatric Institute,
31:36where he went for eight months.
31:39While waiting to be admitted,
31:42he and Kerouac were corresponding.
31:44And Kerouac said I'd say you were
31:46always trying to justify your Moss
31:48madness as against the logical,
31:50sober but hateful sanity.
31:52This is really harmless and even loyal.
31:56And they made light of it in
31:58this funny poem which says all
32:00the doctors think I'm crazy.
32:02The truth is really that I'm lazy.
32:04I made visions to begalum.
32:06Until they put me in the asylum
32:09and they were making fun of this.
32:11But it was not all fun.
32:14There was.
32:15I think the suffering was real and
32:18the questions of what Alan would do
32:20with his life and is Alan on the road
32:23to becoming like Naomi were the most
32:26pressing questions, Kerouac wrote.
32:29To Ginsburg said,
32:31I admire you for delivering
32:32yourself to an actual bug house.
32:34It shows your interest in things and people.
32:36But be careful,
32:37while convincing the docs you're
32:39nuts not to convince yourself.
32:40You see, I know you too well.
32:46So Allen is admitted to the New
32:48York State Psychiatric Institute.
32:49A very different place
32:50than Pilgrim State, right?
32:51It's a collaboration between Pi,
32:54between the state's mental
32:55health system and and Columbia.
32:57And he's admitted to the fifth floor unit.
33:00Which at the time is called the genius war.
33:02And that's a place where
33:04people had psychosis,
33:05but they were doing talk therapy with them.
33:08They did a Rorschach on him,
33:11and this is what they said.
33:12He's brilliant but autistic schizophrenic
33:14of the catatonic type who has religious
33:17ecstasies and occasional agitated periods.
33:20I'm not going to read this whole thing,
33:22but they they were impressed at how
33:25close he was to to psychosis he gets.
33:29On this unit with Paul Hoke,
33:32Paul Hoke is a legendary psychiatrist
33:34from Columbia who was the head
33:37of research there and he had a
33:40developed a diagnosis called pseudo
33:43neurotic type schizophrenia,
33:44which essentially we don't have anymore.
33:46But it said you are like psychotic at your
33:51core and you're defended with sexuality,
33:55antisocial behavior and and.
33:59Not a neurosis of which antisocial
34:03is 1 type of neurosis and other
34:07neurotic symptoms and anxiety.
34:09They were doing psychotherapy
34:10with such patients.
34:11They were also doing psychosurgery
34:13with such patients.
34:14Even even recommended a randomized controlled
34:17trial of such a thing surgery or or.
34:22Psychotherapy.
34:23Luckily,
34:23Allen was not selected for psychosurgery,
34:27but he saw many people who were.
34:30I spoke with one of his psychiatrists
34:32who told me that he spent a lot
34:34of time defending certain people
34:36against getting selected for surgery,
34:38including Allen.
34:40Allen, by the way,
34:42liked this diagnosis because he said to me,
34:44I I I I believe that, and I like that.
34:47We all live near psychosis and we need
34:50to understand that part of ourselves
34:52and and acknowledge it and respect it.
34:56Allen did occupational therapy.
34:58He went did art therapy.
35:01This is a painting he drew looking
35:03out out at the and kind of see.
35:05It's the bridge,
35:06George Washington Bridge over to
35:08the Palisades over Hudson River
35:11and one of his first days in the
35:14hospital he wrote about the bridge.
35:17Of sorts,
35:17he said.
35:18I'm torn between putting aside my
35:20loyalty and love directed to the past,
35:22the underworld,
35:23the mythical symbols of tragedy,
35:25suffering and solitary grandeur,
35:26and the prosaic community of feeling
35:28which I might enter by affirming in
35:30my own allegiance to those bourgeois
35:32standards which I had rejected.
35:34Yet what do I know of the reality of
35:36these bridges and ideas which make
35:38up the visible and invisible world?
35:39And why am I in the madhouse?
35:41How easy it is to reverse these values
35:44entirely and consider myself Ginsburg.
35:47And forbearing wise men in
35:49a nation of madhouses.
35:51Neither of these are true.
35:52I tire of this thought interesting
35:54dilemma that he was finding himself in.
35:56So he goes into therapy.
35:59He has three psychiatry residents
36:01who treat him in once a week and
36:04three or four times a week therapy.
36:06They take fantastic notes,
36:08which I had an opportunity to read.
36:11I don't know of any other
36:13example of a brilliant.
36:15You know creative person at this
36:17troubling time of his life where
36:19we can see the psychotherapy,
36:21but you can see it and I write about
36:23it extensively in in my book and this
36:25is what one of the notes look like.
36:26And you can see he's talking
36:28about his visions.
36:31I'm going to I I talk in great detail
36:33about the therapy, but I just want to
36:36share 3 anecdotes from the therapy.
36:38One is, he says to his therapist.
36:40I'm the greatest poet of my
36:42age and I ask you as like.
36:45Therapist, expert therapist.
36:46What would you say if your
36:48patient said that to you?
36:55What?
36:58He hadn't published anything at that point.
37:01He had a lot of ambition. He was smart,
37:08you know, the therapists were wondering,
37:09is he brilliant?
37:10Is he going to get a book,
37:12or is he going to be like his mother?
37:14Or something in between.
37:15So the the therapist writes it down and then
37:19the therapist has to like get a phone call.
37:22And then while the therapist getting
37:23a phone call, Alan looks at the note.
37:27I'm the greatest poet of my age.
37:28And he looks at it and he says,
37:29that sounds pretty paranoid the
37:30way you have it there, doesn't it?
37:32It was a a great unwitting interpretation,
37:35I think, and I think that they did it.
37:37They did a pretty good job of pushing
37:39back gently on his grandiosity.
37:44And here's another time he's talking
37:46about his visions and he wants them to be
37:50considered special and prophetic states.
37:52And you know, when the therapist says to him,
37:55like, you know, Okay,
37:57so you would sometimes experience things
37:59different from the way people do Okay.
38:02And he's like, no, you know,
38:03I want, you know, I saw God and I
38:06I want everybody to realize that.
38:09So the therapists were in this kind
38:11of dance with him about that and
38:12eventually said to him, like, you know,
38:14it's all about what you do with this.
38:17You know, that's going to make a difference.
38:19So, you know, write about it,
38:21keep working on writing about it.
38:22Show me your poems.
38:24Let's see what the writing looks like.
38:26And he found that helpful.
38:29Here's another.
38:29Even yet,
38:30he made it clear at the start that
38:32he looked upon mental illness
38:34as a definite entity,
38:35that for him everyone in the
38:36world is either sane or insane.
38:38He's having a little trouble
38:39placing himself in this scheme.
38:41He described his visions stating
38:43clearly these are the experience
38:46which previous therapist labeled mad.
38:48OK,
38:49at the end he said they certified
38:51I was not mad,
38:53more of a real neurotic who was
38:54pseudo psychotic you might say.
38:55He said that to me in fact.
38:57Nolan Lewis,
38:58who was the director and probably
39:00one of the leading psychiatrists
39:01in America at the time,
39:03said that he predicted he was going to
39:07become schizophrenic like his mother,
39:09but they didn't tell him that.
39:11So in fact Alan was half right,
39:15half wrong
39:20Alan. So now I'm going to say a
39:22little bit about the poems Alan
39:23was writing in those days, so.
39:26He and Kerouac had this idea
39:28of the Shrouded Stranger,
39:30and he wrote notebooks about
39:32the Shrouded Stranger.
39:34And I'm going to play an excerpt from a a,
39:37a song that he recorded this in the
39:401980s with some of Tom Waits's musicians.
39:43This one's loud.
39:44There's loud music and I'm just warning you.
39:51Oh, come on.
39:57Who'll come lie down in the dark with me,
40:00belly to belly and knee to knee,
40:04Who look into my wooded eye,
40:07Who lie down under my darkened thigh.
40:12So he shared this poem with his therapist.
40:16His therapist thought that this was a Allen.
40:20Trying to reckon with the image of his
40:23kind of seductive but scary mother when
40:26she was psychotic and things like that,
40:32Allen wrote other poems about madness.
40:35He wrote this poem, Patterson,
40:36in which madness is seen as like a
40:39great social and personal virtue.
40:41What do I want in these
40:42rooms papered with money?
40:43I'd rather go mad.
40:44Gone down the dark Rd.
40:46in Mexico, heroin dripping in my veins,
40:49so on and so forth.
40:52About a week after he's discharged,
40:54he went to the Guggenheim where William
40:56Carlos Williams was giving a reading,
40:58and he introduced himself to Williams
41:00and soon thereafter met with Williams and
41:03Will and then wrote this in his journal,
41:06wrote this in a letter to Kerouac
41:09explaining what Williams had taught him.
41:11All you got to do is look
41:13over your notebooks.
41:13That's where I got these poems.
41:15Or lay down on a couch and think of
41:17anything that comes into your head,
41:18especially the miseries.
41:19The miseries or night thoughts.
41:22When you can't sleep an hour before sleeping,
41:24only get up and write it down.
41:25Then arrange in lines of two,
41:273-4 words each.
41:28Don't bother about the sentences
41:30In sections of 234 lines each will
41:32have a huge collected anthology of
41:34American kicks and mental miseries.
41:38And
41:41and Kerouac writes,
41:42you know Williams is right,
41:44the original impulse of the mind.
41:47Is the proceed of first
41:48wild drafts of the poem.
41:50The formal ode is a dull suit
41:52covering the great exciting
41:53nude body of reality, etcetera.
41:56Ellen at the time is also doing a
41:59lot of drawing and he drew these
42:01interesting images in his journal about
42:03the same time as a shrouded stranger.
42:06And these are of a person who's half skull,
42:09half living and man who
42:13sees death is half skull.
42:15Man who knows death, knows he will die,
42:17he knows he will die,
42:19knows death, knows he will die,
42:21knows he was born.
42:22He's playing with the idea
42:23of a double sided existence.
42:25And indeed Alan had lived a double
42:27sided existence his whole life,
42:29going in and out of mental hospitals,
42:30living with Naomi and her
42:33serious mental illness,
42:35her delusions and things like that.
42:38But there are many other people
42:40in his life such as Joan Vollmer,
42:42the wife of William Burrows and.
42:44Phil Kenostra who are also like
42:48tragedies of of madness and who
42:51had died and he wrote these lines.
42:53Many assault gone riding outward on the path,
42:55many assault on to the jail and
42:59prison and asylum Okay she's
43:02thinking about these things.
43:04One day in 1955,
43:06he has no intention of doing anything
43:08particularly important and he writes
43:11and he does what he usually does,
43:13what Williams taught him to do.
43:15He looks through his journal and
43:17he sees this line in his journal.
43:20I saw the best mind Angel
43:23headed hipsters damned OK,
43:25and then he decides to take that line
43:27and a break it in two and he wrote.
43:30I saw the best minds of my generation,
43:33Generation. Destroyed by madness.
43:37Now by breaking this original one line
43:39entry into two distinct phrase thoughts,
43:42as he had learned from Williams,
43:43he put on paper a new and intensely
43:46ambivalent but ultimately liberating
43:49thought concerning madness.
43:50It said madness is destructive
43:52of our generation,
43:54but also that madness might be a product
43:57of this generation's best minds,
43:59or even conducive.
44:00To what makes them so remarkable?
44:03And so he keeps writing and
44:04he puts it in one line.
44:05I saw the best minds of my
44:08generation destroyed by madness.
44:11And so this is like a wonderful
44:14plurality of positions that he opens
44:17up with respect to madness that
44:20he's kind of embracing in this poem
44:23and and notice how he also said.
44:27I saw not.
44:28I was.
44:29So he's saying I'm in the position of
44:31a witness to all of this happening.
44:33And so he just opened up this huge,
44:36like,
44:36blank space where he could fill in
44:39with all the stories of all the people
44:42that he had seen and lived through.
44:44And this became howl,
44:46which he wrote in one marathon
44:49writing session that day.
44:53Let's listen to a little bit of howl.
44:56Oh boy.
44:57Oh yeah.
44:57There we
45:01go. How for Carl Solomon.
45:05I saw the best minds of my
45:08generation destroyed by madness,
45:11Starving, hysterical, naked,
45:12dragging themselves through
45:14the ***** streets at dawn,
45:17looking for an angry fix.
45:20Angel headed hipsters burning for
45:22the ancient heavenly connection to
45:25the starry Dynamo and the machinery
45:27of night who poverty and tatters and
45:30hollow eyed and high sat up smoking
45:33in the supernatural darkness of
45:36cold water flats floating across the
45:39tops of cities contemplating jazz.
45:41Who bared their brains to heaven under
45:44the L and saw Mohammed and angels
45:47staggering on tenement roofs illuminated.
45:50Who passed through universities
45:52with radiant cool eyes,
45:54hallucinating Arkansas and Blake light
45:57tragedy among the scholars of war.
46:00Who were expelled from the academies
46:03for crazy and publishing obscene
46:05odes on the windows of the skull.
46:08Who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear,
46:12burning their money in wastebaskets and
46:14listening to the terror through the wall.
46:17Who got busted in their pubic beards,
46:19returning through Laredo with
46:21a belt of marrow.
46:22So I think you can tell that,
46:25I mean, he's talking about
46:27people's real life experiences,
46:28but this is anything but flat documentation.
46:31It's outrageous. It's scandalous.
46:34It's wonderful. It's terrifying.
46:37And it's really a great liberating document,
46:40as, as Bob Rosenthal has described,
46:44there's another section
46:46of Howell Howell Part 2.
46:49Well, actually, before I come to that,
46:51these are some of the interesting phrases.
46:54This, of course, is referring to
46:57his own visions who demanded sanity,
46:59trials accusing the radio of hypnotism.
47:03That's Naomi who are instead, given the.
47:06Concrete void of insulin, Metrozol,
47:08electricity, hydrotherapy,
47:09psychotherapy, ping pong, amnesia.
47:11That's what he saw at Columbia.
47:13That's what happened to Carl Solomon.
47:15This is also Carl Solomon,
47:17who is the first patient he met at
47:19Columbia and who I also befriended,
47:21who threw potato salad at CCNY lectures
47:24and Dadaism and substantly presented
47:26themselves on the granite steps of the
47:28madhouse with shaven heads and harlekin
47:31speech demanding instantaneous lobotomy.
47:33Do you know that people
47:34did request lobotomies?
47:35Back in that time they would write
47:37letters to Walter Friedman begging
47:38for lobotomy and begging for their
47:40loved ones to get a lobotomy.
47:42So it's actually not completely absurd.
47:45Part 2 of Howell is dedicated to the
47:49Canaanite fire demon Moloch Moloch.
47:52And and this is where he kind of
47:56calls out all of the evil behind.
47:59Institutions that destroy individuals
48:01you know and and that you know the
48:05institutions of destruction ultimately,
48:07which include those that commit lobotomy.
48:10This is from the Howell film.
48:12I'll just play like a minute of this
48:19James Moloch, whose
48:21eyes are 1000 blind windows.
48:26Moloch, whose skyscrapers stand in the
48:29long streets like endless Jehovah's.
48:33Moloch, whose factories dream
48:35and croak in the fog.
48:40Moloch, whose love is endless oil and stone.
48:46Moloch, whose soul is electricity
48:48and banks. Moloch, whose fate
48:51is a cloud of sexless hydrogen.
48:56Moloch and whom I sit lonely.
48:59Moloch and whom I dream Angels
49:05Crazy and Moloch. ********** and Moloch.
49:09Black Love and manless and Moloch.
49:13You got the idea.
49:17So think of how far Ellen
49:20went in these years.
49:21Started with this highly abstract.
49:24Notion of a new vision,
49:25then had his own visions and wrote
49:28I witnessed heaven and Holy time.
49:30Then the Shrouded stranger started
49:33to kind of drift towards figures that
49:36were like people in his own life,
49:39and that we're not only an idealized,
49:42romanticized side of madness,
49:43but a terrifying side of madness.
49:46And then and then this.
49:48Brilliance kind of ambivalent
49:50statement which became an anthem.
49:52I saw the best minds of my
49:53generation destroyed by madness,
49:55where he's occupying this position
49:57of witness near madness as a
49:59multipotent kind of experience
50:01which could be anything from
50:03ecstasy to to terrible destruction.
50:07I think that
50:14you know. I'm just, I'm just going
50:17to wrap it up like this today.
50:19Alan, like William Blake and other artists,
50:23didn't romanticize madness.
50:24I think he knew it could bring
50:27devastating suffering and it and but
50:30he also believed that to reject madness
50:33was to reject like an essential life
50:36force because it comes in multiples,
50:38allowing different connections to be made.
50:41Madness creates possibilities
50:43and its survivors and witnesses.
50:45For new meanings, identities and outcomes.
50:47And Alan opened these doors for us.
50:49So to learn from Alan is to accept,
50:53and this is a quote from the
50:55from the end of Howl.
50:58But the bums as holy as the seraphim,
51:00The madman is holy as you are my
51:04soul as you my soul are holy.
51:07And to walk with Alan is to
51:09believe that madness within us and
51:11around us is sacred and should be
51:13handled with care and reverence.
51:15So I'll stop there.
51:16Thanks.
51:16It's a
51:25very nice cool game though.
51:28Thanks. Questions for Dr. Wine.
51:39Thank you, Steve. That was wonderful.
51:42I was struck rereading how by
51:46the incredible profusion of
51:50visual images and. I wonder if
51:54in the course of your thinking
51:55about his talk therapy, if
51:58you had any sense that I don't
52:00know if he was on a couch
52:02and free associating or doing a
52:04Visa V therapy or what some of
52:07the therapist notes might say,
52:08but I just wonder if they captured
52:11and if that process facilitated
52:14his incredible visual imagination.
52:20Well, I mean, Alan.
52:23Had an extraordinary imagination
52:28that he brought to, you know,
52:31the his experience of psychotherapy
52:35and to everything else.
52:37And and this is a person who was
52:39always writing, always reading.
52:41He was a great fan of the visual arts.
52:44He went to the museum all the time.
52:47He took it all in and then he was,
52:50you know, amongst the cohort
52:51of friends that were sharing.
52:52These things,
52:53I think the big challenge was
52:55like how to shape it, you know,
52:58and how to integrate that with
53:01the real hard experiences that he
53:03was facing in his personal life.
53:06And I think that's where the
53:08therapy was helpful to him.
53:12One I think, I think the therapy helped
53:16him to to understand how to be safe.
53:19I believe he would have killed himself.
53:22Or been in some other car crash or something.
53:26Like many young people,
53:27you know, he was tempting,
53:29tempting fate,
53:30and it got him to step away from kind of
53:35direct involvement in criminal activity
53:38or other suicidal ideas that he had.
53:43It also challenged him to
53:46reject like a dichotomized by.
53:49In the wrong word,
53:50dichotomize notions of madness,
53:51either sane or insane,
53:53and to see many a whole spectrum
53:55of of possibilities it also.
53:58They also encouraged him not
54:01to be like too grandiose.
54:03It's what you do with it in your art,
54:05and also not to be too possessive
54:07of the vision,
54:08which is something that he would
54:10ultimately learn also through Buddhism,
54:13which Kerouac helped to teach him,
54:15don't.
54:16Don't be possessive of that experience.
54:19Is that kind of kind of defeat it.
54:22So these were the things he learned.
54:24He he did art therapy.
54:26He learned that he wasn't a very good artist.
54:28But he had fun doing that
54:33and and I think it meant a lot to him,
54:36that the psychiatrist took
54:39his poetry seriously.
54:41He brought the poetry to the
54:43meetings and he read it there.
54:45And he got good feedback.
54:47His first ever poetry reading was at the
54:49New York State Psychiatric Institute.
54:51At there, like, they did a case conference
54:54on every patient and he read his poetry.
54:56I described that in the book,
54:57and that meant a lot to him.
54:59It was in New York City,
55:00at Columbia University.
55:01He he was all in.
55:03You know, it was great.
55:05One more short question is there.
55:08Something that we know about why it
55:11was Alan rather than his father giving
55:13permission for Naomi's lobotomy.
55:16His parents were divorced at that time.
55:18Alan for a long time had
55:20basically been the caregiver.
55:22Alan was the only one that she
55:24trusted and you know, Alan.
55:26Alan was like living with her
55:28within her delusional system.
55:30He didn't really challenge her
55:32on that and which I think had
55:35a big impact on him as well.
55:37You can imagine what that's like,
55:39how difficult it is.
55:40He was always trying to kind
55:41of calm her down,
55:42talk her down without full
55:45on challenging her.
55:47So it came to him and he did it alone,
55:49and he was 22 years old.
55:52Another remarkable fact.
55:53Okay.
55:54How is it that a person could be
55:59admitted to another state hospital in
56:01New York State Psychiatric Institute?
56:03And the topic of the lobotomy
56:05of the mother never comes up?
56:07Never is addressed,
56:08never is addressed in therapy.
56:10Never, never is addressed as a,
56:13you know,
56:13in relation to the visions and all of that.
56:16I think that that shows that's
56:18one of the limitations.
56:20And you know there there isn't a concept
56:23of medical trauma or trauma informed care.
56:27The closest any of those psychiatrists could
56:29come to that as the notion of genital shock,
56:33just seeing the,
56:35seeing the.
56:36Seeing adult sexuality which which and
56:38his mother making sexual demands on him.
56:41They were a little bit too obsessed
56:43with sexuality as were a lot of
56:45therapists in that in that age.
56:47But nonetheless it was helpful to him.
56:50He did some unburdening and
56:53he felt he got support.
56:56Yes Andress Steve thank you so much
56:59for a wonderful wonderful talk.
57:00I'm.
57:00I'm very much looking forward
57:01to reading the book.
57:02And already with what you
57:03shared with us today,
57:05two other books come to mind
57:07about poets and asylums.
57:10I'm sure that there are many others,
57:11but you know,
57:13Ezra Pound very famously
57:15and there was a book,
57:15but probably the the book on
57:19Robert Lowell written by
57:20another psychologist,
57:21mental health professional,
57:23I I wondered, I think that
57:24there's a connection somewhere
57:25there, but I don't know if these books
57:27have influenced you, if you have,
57:29if there's any connection there.
57:31And thank you again for
57:32the great talk. Thanks.
57:35I'm familiar with those books,
57:37not a direct connection for me.
57:40I was taken by a book and the the work
57:44done on Anne Sexton by Diane Millbrook.
57:47I think it's a very good book and that
57:50book also had psychotherapy progress
57:52notes and that that seemed important.
57:56I like that quite a bit.
58:01The.
58:04I don't know. I was I I I think I didn't have
58:07any direct model that I that I took from.
58:11That was one of the biggest
58:12challenges of writing the book,
58:13which is of how to how to capture
58:16what happened in psychotherapy.
58:18To make it interesting for the reader
58:22to get for the drama and the story of
58:25it and to not get too bogged down in,
58:29you know, professional jargon.
58:30And I think it, I think it comes out
58:33pretty well you you feel like you were
58:37you feel like you're in the room of that.
58:38And I and I think despite the limitations
58:42of psychotherapy of that era good
58:45stuff happened. They helped him and.
58:48And I wanted that to become clear.
58:50Yeah. And that was one of my the
58:53important conclusions I think from
58:56this book which is he was really in a.
58:59Vulnerable position in those years.
59:01It could have gone either way.
59:03Yes, he was brilliant,
59:05but, you know,
59:06there was also this family history and,
59:08you know, no question that he has some
59:11genetic predisposition to psychosis.
59:12And it was not a foreseen conclusion
59:16that he was going to become a
59:18National Book Award winner.
59:19And, you know, write these remarkable poems.
59:23And so, you know, I wanted to understand.
59:28The work that he did either in the
59:31hospital with his therapist or with
59:34his friends and family that helped him
59:36to recover and get on the right track
59:39and then to make use of this experience
59:42which which which he did and he by
59:45embracing it and and finding a way to
59:48write poetry to get art done from it.
59:51And so
59:55that this is a little bit different from.
59:58I think the kind of mythic notion
01:00:01of Alan Alan's birth as a poet
01:00:05prophet that he in a way promoted.
01:00:08With this I heard the voice of William Blake.
01:00:10He was anointed as Blake's follower.
01:00:14He immediately had this heavenly
01:00:16connection and he just did his thing.
01:00:18This became a very important birth
01:00:21story to give during the psychedelic
01:00:24era when he and Timothy Leary were.
01:00:27Selling LSD to everybody.
01:00:31And it was it gave him St. cred, right?
01:00:33It's like I could be the Pied Piper
01:00:36for the LSD revolution because I,
01:00:38I, William Blake is my father.
01:00:42But it wasn't that simple.
01:00:43It was a dozen years of work,
01:00:46including, you know, a lot of.
01:00:49Dealing with traumatic memories
01:00:51and experiences,
01:00:53family troubles and all that.
01:00:54Homosexuality I haven't even talked about.
01:00:58So he did a lot of work.
01:01:02I the only part of it that I didn't get,
01:01:06the part of it I didn't get
01:01:08to share with him ever,
01:01:10was the part about Naomi,
01:01:11about Naomi's sexual abuse.
01:01:13I think that he would have very much
01:01:16been interested in that, I told Lyle.
01:01:20Brooks, his nephew, a few weeks ago,
01:01:24because I wanted him to hear it from
01:01:26me rather than to read it in the book.
01:01:30I think it would have given Alan
01:01:32some perspective on his own kind
01:01:34of sexuality hang ups and problems
01:01:37of which there were There were
01:01:40quite a few and and so I think he
01:01:42would have wanted to know that.
01:01:43So I'm I regret that I I never got to
01:01:46him in time with that part of the story.
01:01:49Well, you know as part of our
01:01:51Ground Round series,
01:01:52you try to highlight talks that look
01:01:53at the intersection of the arts and
01:01:56and and mental health and I think this is
01:01:58a wonderful contribution to that series.
01:02:01So thank you so much Doctor White
01:02:02for a really thoughtful and moving
01:02:03talks. Thank you.
01:02:09And if anyone would like to stay,
01:02:10please feel free if anyone has to leave.
01:02:11But if anyone else would like to stay and
01:02:13continue the conversation, please do stay
01:02:15happy to hang out and talk.
01:02:18So there's Dave Forrest.
01:02:20Hi, David. How you doing?
01:02:23David Forrest was
01:02:25very well. Thank you,
01:02:26Steve, and a wonderful talk
01:02:28at Columbia. And there Nancy
01:02:29Olson is in the audience too.
01:02:31You can't see Nancy,
01:02:32if you come up here, you could,
01:02:34you could see David is a psychiatrist
01:02:36and psychoanalyst at Columbia who
01:02:38was my mentor at Columbia at the
01:02:40time I started doing this work.
01:02:42And David?
01:02:43Has done a lot of work on EE Cummings.
01:02:46Here's Nancy Olson.
01:02:48Hi, David. Nancy, I remember seeing
01:02:50you back then meeting you back then.
01:02:55Anyways, great to see you. Let
01:02:57me I just want to say one thing which
01:02:58is interesting, I think for everyone.
01:03:00I don't know how many people there
01:03:01are students, but
01:03:03it is interesting that
01:03:05Allen had this special trust in Steven
01:03:09as a young medical student. Really.
01:03:13Untrained but a fresh mind and I had
01:03:17a similar experience with Cummings
01:03:19who at the time I was writing a thesis
01:03:21about him at Princeton. Wouldn't
01:03:24talk to any academics
01:03:26but he befriended me and he helped me a
01:03:28great deal with my with my thesis which
01:03:32got a lot of attention because of that
01:03:34and I think it's very inspiring and
01:03:37and the message should be promulgated
01:03:39to young students that.
01:03:41Don't wait until you are
01:03:43August and credentialed.
01:03:45But if you
01:03:46have a chance to meet
01:03:48and talk with remarkable
01:03:50people of your generation,
01:03:53you might be surprised that not
01:03:54only will they be interested in you,
01:03:56but that you can help them.
01:03:57Just as sometimes we have patients
01:03:59who are helped by the medical
01:04:00student more than the attending.
01:04:04Thank you for sharing that, David.
01:04:08All right, nice to see you and all.
01:04:10We'll be in touch. Yeah.