![]() ![]() He associated with others of his generation who suffered from mental illness, including the Dadaist Carl Solomon, to whom “Howl” is dedicated. Ginsberg’s own madness manifested as feeling the “presence” of inanimate objects, having visions, and struggling with homosexuality (which, during the 1950s, was itself classified as a mental disorder). ![]() His mother, a schizophrenic, was hospitalized multiple times and subjected to the harsh treatments of the day, including electric shock therapy, insulin therapy, and toward the end, a frontal lobotomy that her poet son, still a young man, was obliged to authorize. Allen Ginsberg, who revolutionized poetry with his seminal “Howl” and who was a major force in the Beat Generation and the “flower power” social revolution of the 1960s, was deeply influenced by madness. ![]()
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