What my psychiatrist said

In San Francisco Ginsberg saw another psychiatrist, Philip Hicks, who asked him what he would like to do. "Doctor," as Ginsberg recalls his answer, "I don't think you're going to find this very healthy and clear,"

but I really would like to stop working forever--never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I'm doing now--and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure to spend the day outdoors and go to museums and see friends. And I'd like to keep living with someone -- maybe even a man -- and explore relationships that way. And cultivate my perceptions, cultivate the visionary thing in me. Just a literary and quiet city-hermit existence. Then he said "Well, why don't you?" I asked him what the American Psychoanalytic Association would say about that, and he said . . . if that is what you really feel would please you, what in the world is stopping you from doing it?

http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/ginsberg50s.html

Grauzone

Irgendwie hatte ich mir das anders vorgestellt. Da ziehen sie vorbei die ganzen Studenten und keinen davon kenn ich, da warten sie die Leute aus meiner Promo und ich sitz 3 m daneben. Zeitpunkt verpasst, sozial unfähig? Wird das je besser? Oder bleibt es gar immer so und ich werde mich mit Schrecken an meine Studienzeit erinnern? Ich fürchte so wird es kommen.

Ich hatte mir alles anders vorgestellt. Jetzt wohn ich am Ende der Welt, bin schon das zweite Wochenende in Folge zu Hause geblieben, das einzig vollbrachte war die Nacharbeit fürs Studium. Ich bin frustriert und eine Zumutung für meine Umwelt.