Allen Ginsbergs Poetry and Psychiatry Essay -- Ginsberg Mental Health

Allen Ginsbergs Poetry and psychopathologyIntroductionFrom the 1930s to the 1960s, early attempts to combining the psychiatric goals of restoring psychic health with new advances in medical wisdom would produce tragic results for galore(postnominal) of those who trusted modern psychiatry to furnish comfort and healing. During this time, science, psychiatry, ambition, power, and politics came together to leave behind a contentious history of events that destroyed the trust and hope placed by many upon modern science and left behind a trail of marred minds and ruined lives.When Allen Ginsberg, the famous Beat poet, attacked the American psychical health complaint system of the 1950s in his poem, Howl, he knew the subject well. These experiences, which he depict as memories and anecdotes and eyeballs kicks and shock of hospitals, were vivid, yet accurate descriptions of psychiatric practices of the time (Ginsberg 50). both(prenominal) Ginsberg and his mother, Naomi Ginsberg, had been committed to mental hospitals. Tragically, his mother would spend her most of her final historic period as a resident of New Jerseys Greystone and New Yorks Pilgrim State mental hospitals, often heavily sedated with medication, then finally lobotomized (Asher).LobotomiesIn 1936, Egas Moniz, a Portuguese neurologist, introduced the world to a radical new procedure to treat the mental illness of schizophrenia. This procedure was a surgical proceeding performed on the brain, called a prefrontal leucotomy and would become more commonly known as the lobotomy. The operation consisted of the insertion of a needle to perform incisions that destroyed connections between the prefrontal region and other parts of the brain. This helped to reduce incidents of the negative behavior, b... ...berg Selected Poems, 1947-1955. Harper collins Publishers, New York. 1996.Jansson, Bengt. Controversial Psychosurgery Resulted in a Nobel Prize. Nobel e-Museum. < http//www.nobel.se/medicine/arti cles/moniz/KKMP Ken Kesey and the zippy Pranksters (Author Unknown). University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia. 1999. Nobel E-Museum (Author Unknown). Biography of Egas Moniz. Rodgers, Joann Ellison. Psychosurgery Damaging the brain to save the mind (excerpt). Psychology Today, March-April 1992 v25 n2.Sabbatini, Renato, M. E. The memorial of Psychosurgery. Shorter, Edward. A History of Psychiatry. John Wiley and Sons, New York. 1997.TDTS The Doctors Trials Summary. United States Holocaust Museum Archives. Weinstein, Harvey M., M.D. Psychiatry and the CIA Victims of Mind Control. American Psychiatric Press, Washington, D.C. 1990.