H.G. Baynes

Helton Godwin Baynes was an English physician, army officer, analytical psychologist and author, who was a friend and early translator into English of Carl Jung.

Baynes was born on June 26, 1882 and educated at Leighton Park School (along with two other leading members of the British Psychoanalytical Society: John Rickman and Lionel Penrose) and then at Trinity College, Cambridge where he read medicine and where he won Blues for Rowing and Swimming two years running. He graduated M.B. B.C. in 1910.

In 1913 he married Rosalind Thornycroft (1891-1973), daughter of Sir William Hamo Thornycroft, their daughters Bridget Rosalind and Chloë were born in 1914 and 1916. Godwin and Rosalind were divorced in 1921. (Rosalind, a friend of D. H. Lawrence, later married the art historian Arthur E. Popham.)In 1927 he married Cary De Angulo. She divorced him in 1931 when he became involved with someone else. Baynes died on 6 September 1943.

Baynes became a House Physician at St Bartholomew's Hospital for his qualifying year, obtaining his M.R.C.S.Eng, L.R.C.P.Lond in 1912. Later he studied hypnotism at La Salpêtrière in Paris. He volunteered to serve in the First Balkan War (1912-1913) and was head of the Red Crescent mission to Turkey and was decorated by Enver Pasha. After practicing in Bethnal Green he moved to Wisbech in late 1913, leaving the town in 1915. He had established a new practice in the Old Market. He served in the RAMC in France, Mesopotamia and Persia and was mentioned in dispatches. During World War I he became interested in Jung's psychology and was part of a group that formed the Analytical Psychology Club after the war. It was modelled on the club convened by Jung in Zurich. In 1922 Baynes went to Zurich for analysis. That year he started collaborating with Cary Angulo, née Fink (1883-1977) in translating Jung. Baynes accompanied Jung on his expedition to East Africa in 1925–26. On his return to the UK, he became one of the chief proponents of the new psychology, and leader of the London club, while others emigrated.

Baynes was a friend of the Fordham family and was supportive of them after Mrs. Fordham died leaving teenage children among whom was the future fellow Trinity alumnus and pioneer Jungian analyst, Michael Fordham. Baynes offered him a first brief analysis in 1933, and after Fordham failed to become an assistant to Jung in Zurich, Baynes saw him again for a period (1935–36) before handing him on to Hildegard Kirsch, a Zurich trained psychologist and refugee from Germany.

Baynes died on September 6, 1943.