Hooo boy, that post about Mal's poem has raised some feelings.
Here's my take, for what it's worth:
I think on balance it's almost certain that Paul did say it, and that Mal took him literally. If Paul didn't mean it literally, I think he knew Mal well enough to know he would, and should at the very least have recognised it when he did.
Derek Taylor has said “I don’t think I ever hated anyone as much as I hated Paul in the summer of 1968.”
(Gotta be honest here, I find his text completely unreadable, so if anyone can figure out what Paul did to upset Derek I'd appreciate a summary).
The fact is Paul's world was falling apart in 1968 and it looks like sometimes he was an asshole about it. He is human, after all.
I have no idea whether he's ever grappled with the reality of the way he behaved. Maybe he's rationalised it, maybe it keeps him up at night, maybe he's actually processed it in really healthy ways. Who knows, Yoko? But I know for certain that summer 68 isn't his whole personality.
I think Linda really helped him take a step back from the world he had inhabited, and gave him ways of accepting his talent as real and special while denying the claims (by Leary, and the Maharishi, etc) that he was anything other than a man.
In fact, I think that's why the whole "I'm a normal guy" thing is so important to him. He let himself be convinced for a while that he was more/better than normal people, and it led him down dark paths.
