Mythology of the Soul (Psychology Revivals)

<p>Originally published in 1940 this classic study of two schizophrenic case-histories further opened up the seemingly intractable problem of this condition; a task preceded by Jung’s own <i>Psychology of Dementia Praecox</i>. It was Baynes’s grasp of the meaning of the symbol coupled with his wide scholarship that enable him to explore the case-histories in such remarkable and fruitful depth thus linking pathological psychology through graphic expression and the dream of the myths of mankind and the universal man. This was truly a scientific task.</p><p>In case 1 the series of dreams fantasies and active imagination fully illustrated by the patients’ spontaneous paintings suggested to him a kind of mythological imagery. Baynes then demonstrates the emergence and development of a hero myth together with its therapeutic effect upon the patient as an inner personal experience of death and rebirth.</p><p>Baynes also applied the methods of synthesis to the understanding of modern art and its reflection of the spirit of the times – a realization of the basic split in the socio-religious structure of European Culture. In case 2 the subject was an artist and out of his own split he seemed to have created a symbolic bridge that would be a therapeutic bridge for himself and a possible model for curing the evil of the times in which we then were living.</p>