The poetry of madness (part 1 of 2)

The second of two symposia sponsored by the Esalen Institute on the value of psychotic experience, entitled "The Poetry of Madness", recorded July 31, 1968 at the Longshoremen's Memorial Hall in San Francisco. Panelists are John Perry, a San Francisco-based psychiatrist; Claudio Naranjo, a psychiatrist from Chile; Allen Ginsberg, poet; and Alan Watts, philosopher and writer; discussion is moderated by Julian Silverman, general manager of the Esalen Institute. Perry discusses Plato's thoughts on madness and creative thinking and describes the general behaviors of the schizophrenic. Watts claims that the poet and musician speak a "universal language" and that our relationship to nature is rooted in social engineering. Naranjo elucidates the difference between the schizophrenic and the poet and the role of shamanism in indigenous cultures. Ginsberg plays cymbals while reciting an incantation and then reads "Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber."