Transcriptions of five interviews recorded in 1988; a selection of Mary's poetry and prose and reproductions of 18 of her paintings, 12 in colour. Mary Barnes, recalling the nature of the exchanges with an audience that she describes as "rather behaviourist" (following a seminar she had delivered on Breakdown: Going Back to Go Forward, at the School of Experimental Psychology in Oxford), comments laconically "... we seemed to be rather at cross-purposes". - I can well believe it. In this book Mary is often at her most illuminating when, abandoning the blunt instrument of more common usage as altogether inadequate, she dwells within a manner of disclosure uniquely her own. This idiosyncratic style, a quixotic and infectious combination of childlike wonder, extended religious imagery/metaphor and trenchant common sense, lends a "being-with" quality to Mary's evocations of her inner world. This is especially so when she wishes to exteriorize those turbulent and distressing states of mind that she experienced whilst in regression at Kingsley Hall between 1965-1970; states imbued with much personal meaning, but inherently elusive of accessible description.

Mary Barnes has had an eventful life, one that has embraced both the polarity of suffering, despair and inner schism and that of hope, regeneration and an evident joy in creation and being creative. Now able to consider her traumatic and pivotal experience at Kingsley Hall in a rather more detached manner, Mary's reflections reveal an appreciation of the very real difficulties involved in attempting to balance the needs of an utterly self-absorbed regresssee with the therapist's need to establish some workable boundaries to that persons demanding/controlling behaviour. Mary acknowledges that those tending to her had also to be constantly mindful of the effect that her wilful and occasionally bizarre activities were having on the life of the community as a whole; she comments ruefully on the often frenzied exchanges between herself and the other residents and the charged atmosphere occasionally by her adorning the walls with her paintings. Mary says herself that she only realized what was truly involved in her "Going Down" when embarked on the journey proper, the prolonged struggle between the regressive impulse to stay in the perceived place of safety and the need to "Come Up" into the everyday world, adding the caveat that such tensions may wreak havoc without skilled guidance.

The publication in 1971 of Mary Barnes: Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness (Mary Barnes and Joseph Burke, Penguin 1973, F.A.B. 1991), along with the critical acclaim being accorded to her paintings, saw Mary elevated to virtual celebrity status, albeit of a rather peculiar kind. One of the problems with which Mary has had to deal is the assumption by many of those seeking her advice that she possesses some magical formula that, once transmitted, would ensure a successful outcome when grappling with their own Demons. Such is the respect Mary held for the skills of R.D. Laing and Joseph Burke, that at one time she admits to believing that only with and through them could someone discover their true path in life. Becoming however, increasingly independent and pragmatic, Mary eschews notions of anyone's omniscience or claims to therapeutic hegemony by any particular school or method, cautioning inquirers that there is precious little magic involved in the process of therapy, it being more a question of hard work and a willingness to accept that in the relief of suffering is involved a participation in that suffering.

On the subject of what she feels should constitute the true places of healing in the future, Mary is both passionate and persuasive, this being involved a concern that has exercised her greatly over the last twenty years both as an indefatigable giver-of-talks and an unstinting giver-of-support to many projects. Mary's philosophy, (drawing largely on that of the Philadelphia and Arbours associations) is that the appropriate setting for someone experiencing breakdown is neither the family nexus nor a mental hospital or like institution, as these impose expectations on behaviour of one sort or another. What Mary advocates are "places of neutrality", small-scale therapeutic households offering a refuge or retreat for those wishing to withdraw temporarily when life's responsibilities get too much to bear and who have made the conscious choice to seek an alternative to physical/ medicative forms of treatment.

When Mary gives her views on the patient-unfriendly nature of traditional hospitals, we are reminded that as a former principal tutor to student nurses in London and as herself a former patient in a mental hospital, she knows whereof she speaks. Whilst bemoaning their reliance on hierarchical structures, the tyranny of routine and regulations, their tendency to "label" and the conventions surrounding the maintenance of professional identities, i.e. - all those conditions unlikely to promote feelings of well-being in the already bewildered, Mary is also alive to the difficulties in dispensing with such regalia.

In Mary's call for centres ministering to the needs of the whole person, psychological, physical, spiritual, and which would, moreover, nurture an atmosphere of creativity, spontaneity and cooperation, we can, perhaps, hear echoes of the authentic voice of 1960s radicalism, its impassioned commitment, it's occasional naivety. To these ideals - those that informed and moulded the ethos obtaining at Kingsley Hall, are added Mary's considerable abilities as an organizer, communicator and inspirer of others; these abilities, allied to a rigorous single-mindedness, saw, in 1987, the setting up of the Shealin Trust in Glasgow, which Mary hopes will embody many of her ideas.

Mary Barnes has a deeply held religious faith, she spent some time as a Carmelite postulant and found it difficult to accept that she did not have a vocation for convent life. After Kingsley Hall, Mary felt that her vocation lay "in the work of R.D. Laing in some way,.... in trying to help to spread the knowledge of psychotherapy". In Mary's thoughts and writings there is a fairly seamless intermingling of the sacred and the secular, though her proselytising on behalf of Therapy does sometimes have a touch of missionary zeal about it. She draws analogies throughout this book between the terms of religious practice and those of psychotherapy, considering, for example, the relationship between therapist and client to be essentially that of a spiritual Director to a novice, and that the Mother Superior in an enclosed order performs the function that, psychoanalytically, might be described as holding or containing. The "Depth Understanding" that once was alive in the Christian Church has, Mary believes, largely passed into the hands of the therapists.

Mary has some interesting observations on the difficulties religious orders may experience in dealing directly with unresolved childhood problems, underlining the dangers of an emotionally immature person entering an order and complying with the strict routines while letting their inner needs languish. Mary observes that there are many catholics trying to enter a religious order who would benefit from being told by someone in that order, "I think you may well find fulfilment here, but I really think that you should go to a psychotherapist for a short time first" (!)

I found Something Sacred to be interesting and thought-provoking reading, especially Conversation five on religion and psychotherapy. There is an admirable introduction by Ann Scott in which she deftly sketches out and ponders the issues to be further explored by Mary and herself. Ms. Scott is also an able and informed interviewer, her well-paced interjections contributing in no small way to the natural flow and themic unity of the conversations.

Peter Jennings