voyage
to
the
self
and
back.
Syd Barrett
"Perhaps it was the drugs. Barrett's intake at the time was suitably fearsome, while many considered his metabalism for such chemicals to be a trifle fragile. Certainly they only tended towards a further tipping of the psyche-scales, but it would be far too easy to write Barrett off as some hapless acid amputee - even though certain folks now claim that a two-month sojourn in Richmond with a couple suitably named "Mad Sue" and "Mad Jock" had him drinking a cup of tea each morning which was unknown to Syd, spiked with a heavy dosage of acid.
Such activity can, of course, lead to a certain degree of breain-damage, but I fear one has to stride manfully blindfolded into a rather more Freudian landscape, leading us to the opinion of many of the people I talked to who claimed that Syd's dilemma stretched back to certain childhood traumas.
The youngest of a family of eight, heavily affected by the sudden death of his father when Syd was twelve years old, spoilt by a strong-willed omther who may or may not have imposed a strange distinction between the dictates of fantasy and reality - each connection forms a patch-work quilt like set-up of insinuations and potential cause-and-effect mechanisms.
"Everyone is supposed to have fun when they're young - I don't know why, but I never did" - Barrett talking in an interview to *Rolling Stone*, Autumn 1971"
taken from here.