Ginsberg in fact spent some time in a psychiatric ward and his poem Howel makes the implication that his and his contemporaries madness is caused by the madness of society which, due to its infatuation with technology, has become a demon far worse than any found in humanity's collective mythology.

Jung argues that in modern society, mythology has not actually disappeared, it has just taken a less noticeable form in terms of such concepts as "human willpower." In order to deal with these internal demons, humans now turn to alcohol and tobacco, which is another major theme in Howl. Essentially, instead of embracing our collective myths, humans have internalized them and casts them out by suppressing their meanings and hiding from them through new technology, drugs and alcohol, to such a point that we feel trapped by these demons we no longer recognize and therefore continue to run from blindly....
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