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Faber critiques the work of Owen Barfield and James Hillman, leaders of a "school of imagination." Their theoretical position is derived from the writings of Wordsworth and Coleridge from whom they have revived Romantic imagination as a panacea to combat the materialism of modern scientific thinking. Faber re-examines the works of Wordsworth and Coleridge and arrives at an understanding of imagination different from that usually described. Wordsworth reads into the world a relational warmth that is derived from the "mirror relationship" between mother and child. However, Wordsworth fails to perceive the internalized "bad" stimulation due to childhood separation and frustrations. Wordsworth substitutes both imagination and nature for the relinquished parental object. Coleridge, too, substitutes imagination for the lost object and provides insight into the "bad" side of that relationship. He gives a projected version of his own unhappy existence.
Barfield embraces an imagination that has the power to overcome the void of the modern world through comforting images. Hillman decries analyzing the imagination away and views psychopathology as a way to salvation. Both Barfield and Hillman miss the fact that imagination "bears witness not to the divine, beatific nature of human personality once it has escaped the idol of scientific thought or reason … (but) bears witness … to the split, agonized nature of our fundamental years."