Mythology of the soul : a research into the unconscious from schizophrenic dreams and drawings / by H.G. Baynes.

  • Helton Godwin Baynes
Date:
1940
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mythology of the soul : a research into the unconscious from schizophrenic dreams and drawings / by H.G. Baynes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    speaks of deficiency in individual feeling. The restless, dis¬ satisfied hunger that frequently motivates the erotic search is the most tragic expression of the fundamental emotional defect; for the schizophrenic lacks that fire in the heart by which a man knows when he is finally committed for better or worse. He cannot voluntarily commit himself either to a relation or to a standpoint; he is even liable to parade a meretricious feeling of superiority over those less fortunate beings who allow their roots to hold them to home, faith, or country. Here again, it is the inferior type of individual who pursues the fata morgana of sexual perversity, goes whoring after magic or yogi-cults, or traffics in occultism with purveyors of cheap mystery. In my experience schizophrenic indi¬ viduals tend to be attracted by things beyond the pale; but, just because of their unreliable feeling, they have no sub¬ jective criterion wherewith to measure the worth of what they find. Hence, they often remain in indeterminate psychical backwaters; caught but sceptical. The better type, however, in whom integrity is the key¬ note, realizes his secret propensity for spiritual as well as for sexual philandering and, just because of this self-know¬ ledge, learns to honour loyalty as the guiding principle of his life. In most cases, sexuality remains at the bisexual level, though, in deference to the susceptibilities of the marriage- partner, the homosexual component is either screened or repressed. The presence of atavism or emotional squalor beneath necessitates a correspondingly opaque mask above; all the more impenetrable, in fact, because it is the product of an absolute need for self-protection. Candour is excep¬ tional. The feeling which enables a man to yield himself unreservedly to his fate is lacking: hence the unreserved statement or affirmation of his personality is also absent. He is liable to feel acutely his alienation, difference, and separation from his fellow-men; yet this is the last thing he is willing to discuss. At all costs he must appear like those around him: there must be no chink in his protective armour of simulation.
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