Perry, John W.: The Self in Psychotic Process: Its Symbolization in Schizophrenia [Berkeley and Los Angeles, California:  University of California Press, 1953. Pp.  184. With 12 Drawings in Color, 10 Plates, and 16 Figures. $5.00]

This book is devoted to a detailed Jungian analysis of material from a young woman patient in the midst of an acute catatonic schizophrenic episode with projective trends. During the interviews the patient drew in color the usual forms of her conflicts and feelings, associations on which revealed their significance in terms of the images of the “self” as it passed through fundamental changes. In the words of the author, “Here in this case there was no analysis, and the symbols of the self came straight out of the patient's delusional fabrications, with no influence whatsoever from the therapist's part or from any previous knowledge of such symbols or their meaning on the patient's part, and they speak their own meaning from their own context with unmistakable implications.”

For a scientific understanding of the symbols produced the investigator must assemble and compare a great variety of unconscious products from the realms of fantasy, dreams, visions, folklore, primitive mentality, myth, religion and alchemy. Here the “self” is the totality of the psyche including both the conscious and unconscious parts. It is represented by symbols in the form of the quadrated circle.

There is a foreword by Prof. C. G. Jung in which he outlines some of the history of his early thinking and studies in dynamic psychopathology, and the author gives excellent discussions of the mandala and other archetypal images and their role in the integrative process of the mind in general and in the mental disorder of the patient in particular. The illustrations throughout the book are excellent, and the text is well organized for interesting reading. It is distinctly a contribution to psychopathology.