"Men have called me mad, but science has not yet decided whether madness is, or is not, the highest form of intelligence."

    - Edgar Allen Poe

    I have no hesitation in putting forward the idea, which is paradoxical only at first sight, that the art of those who are classified as mentally ill constitutes a reservoir of mental health.  This is precisely because it is unaffected by all those considerations which tend to falsify the evidence which we others are preparing, considerations such as external influences, conscious calculations, success or disappointments encountered on the social level, etc.  The mechanisms of artistic creation are here freed of all such shackles.  Through an astonishing dialectical effect, the factors of close confinement and the renunciation of all worldly vanities, despite their pathetic aspect in terms of the individual, together provide the guarantees of a total authenticity which is sadly lacking everywhere else, and the absence of which affects us more and more gravely day to day.

    - Andre Breton, from "The Art of the Insane, Freedom to Roam Abroad"