Thin Partitions

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 742, 2 October 1953, Page 26

Thin Partitions

Great wits and madness both are close allied _ And thin partitions do their bounds divide. ‘THESE lines by the poet Dryden provide the title, Thin Partitions, and the subject of a series of talks by Dr. Geoffrey Blake Palmer, Medical Superintendent at Seacliff Mental Hospital, now being heard from 4YC on Sunday nights. In the first Dr. Blake Palmer discussed. the borderland of genius and aberration, and this Sunday (October 4) at 9.30 p.m., he will be heard talking about some writers and artists. He mentions, for example, the case of Donne: "In an age less able to accept differences as is our own, he might well have faced certification"’-or the unrest that produced his poetry might have been stilled by treatment of one sort or another, On Sunday, October 11, at 9.25 p.m., Dr. Blake Palmer will consider some philosophers and divines. After looking at further examples in another three talks he will wind up the series with an examination of the fallacious view that because genius is often aberrant, aberrant people may be genjuses in disguise. He will also deal with pre-sent-day psychiatric studies on fhe question from the medical and anthropological viewpoints.