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This is an account of the analysis of two borderline schizophrenic patients. Clinical material is largely confined to dreams and drawings, analysed by the 'introverting technique' of Jung, with the help of abundant knowledge of mythology. Erudite and fascinating as this may be, one misses an appreciation of transference dynamics, which is considered now by many to be essential if interpretations are to be mutative in accordance with the scientific laws of mental function.
The individual's myth is defined as a stream of living images enfolding the naïve mind as a river contains a trout, and already flowing like a natural fountain out of the Unconscious 'before the human mind had ever set itself to the labour of thought'. Dr. Baynes believes that the moral of a people abides in their relation to their myth; when this is destroyed by intellectual sophistication or by stagnation in still pools of custom, the virtue of a people departs. He sees such people, like the prodigal son, as prised from their original background and eager to depart from the monotony of traditional patterns, to appraise their birthright from a new and vital standpoint, and thus to progress to fresh creative ways. This is the advantage attributed to the new 'introverting technique' of Jung, whose departure from Freud, the author asserts, brought to an untimely end a collaboration which was full of promise for the development of the new science. One realizes with solemn thought that this departure differed from that of the prodigal son, who returned after seeking pastures new.
Dr. Baynes describes vividly a demonic renegade factor in the schizophrenic which threatens the stability and integrity of consciousness, eavesdropping at every session and trying to poison the work. One feels that solid transference analysis would be the only antidote to this. However, attraction to the myth as a possible return to the golden age of infant fancy is denied, and the monotonous piecemeal interpretations on