Author of the Month: Marion Milner
Selected by the Bookshop
Our Author of the Month for June is the British psychotherapist Marion Milner.
Her first book A Life of One's Own, which began as a journal in which she recorded and analysed moments of happiness, was published in 1934 under the pen name Joanna Field. Introspection, the fleetingness of thoughts and mental states, and a radical openness to sensory experience became hallmarks of her writing and therapeutic practice, a practice recounted most fully in her case history of a psychotic patient The Hands of the Living God. Her ideas, drawing on the work of Jean Piaget and the Jungian school of psychoanalysis, remain hugely influential today, particularly in the field of art therapy – she was herself an enthusiastic painter, as recounted in her book On Not Being Able to Paint.
You can browse through some of her titles here, or come and meet them in the flesh on our dedicated Milner table throughout June.
From the publisher:
'This is what I really want. I want to discover ways to discriminate the important things in human life. I want to find ways of getting past this blind fumbling with existence.' - Marion Milner, from A Life of One’s Own.How often…
From the publisher:
'Before I began this experiment I had always been haunted by the feeling that the surface of life, what everyone said about it, was quite different from the reality of life, that the important things that were happening all the time were on…
From the publisher:
Introduction by Adam PhilipsAt once autobiographical and psychoanalytic, The Hands of the Living God, first published in 1969, provides a detailed case study of Susan who, during a 20-year long treatment, spontaneously discovers the…
From the publisher:
Introduction by Janet SayersMilner’s great study, first published in 1950, discusses the nature of creativity and those forces which prevent its expression. In focusing on her own beginner’s efforts to draw and paint, she…
From the publisher:
Introduction by Margaret Walters Milner's final text, Bothered by Alligators, came about when, in her nineties, she unexpectedly came across a diary she had kept during the early years of her son's life, recording his…
From the publisher:
Introduction by Hugh HaughtonFollowing on from A Life of One’s Own and An Experiment in Leisure, Eternity’s Sunrise explores Marion Milner’s way of keeping a diary. Recording small private moments,…
From the publisher:
We all want more free time. But do we know how to use it?'Illuminating and thought-provoking' Darian Leader'Astounding, generous, and quietly exhilarating' Daisy LaFargeThe celebrated psychoanalyst Marion Milner lived for the entirety of…
From the publisher:
This is a book about reading, drawing, and getting better—and what they have to do with one another.The British essayist, artist, and psychoanalyst Marion Milner (1900-1998) thought deeply about how reading, drawing, and getting…
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