This book traces the development of British psychoanalyst Marion Milner’s (1900–98) autobiographical acts throughout her lifetime, proposing that Milner is a thinker to whom we can turn to explore ...the therapeutic potentialities of autobiographical and creative self-expression. Milner’s experimentation with aesthetic, self-expressive techniques are a means to therapeutic ends, forming what Emilia Halton-Hernandez calls her "autobiographical cure." This book considers whether Milner’s work champions this site for therapeutic work over that of the relationship between patient and analyst in the psychoanalytic setting. This book brings to light a theory and practice which is latent and sometimes hidden, but which is central to understanding what drives Milner’s autobiographical work. It is by doing this work of elucidation and organisation that Halton-Hernandez finds Milner to be a thinker with a unique take on psychoanalysis, object relations theory, creativity, and autobiography, working at the interstices of each. Divided into two fascinating sections exploring Milner’s distinctive method and the legacy and influence of her work, this book will appeal to psychoanalysts, art therapists, philosophers, and art and literary researchers alike. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
This article explores British psychoanalyst Marion Milner's (1900–1998) understanding of how creative play and drawing for her child and adult patients is integral to transformation in the analytic ...encounter. Milner explicitly proposes the act of picture‐making as providing a reparative experience of an attuned, reciprocal relationship with another. Her term the ‘pliable medium’ first coined in her book On Not Being Able to Paint (1950) is explored as a concept reflective of Milner's enduring commitment to art‐making as an explicitly therapeutic activity. In this way, we come to see how Milner's clinical technique depends as much on facilitating the patient's creativity in the analytic situation as it does in considering what the patient‐analyst relationship can do for the patient's psychic growth.
This article explores the British psychoanalyst and autobiographer Marion Milner's (1900-1998) methods for self-analysis through diary-keeping, writing and drawing, and seeks to draw out the ...connections between her methods and Alison Bechdel's psychoanalytically informed graphic memoir Are You My Mother? (2012). Both authors grapple with the differences between what a 'couch analysis' can do for them, and what another method for doing internal work, one that is conducted via the 'making of "marks on paper"' in various different ways can achieve. Bechdel and Milner's visual and verbal mark-making will be explored in how it helps them provide for themselves a sense of 'continuity of being', or a more solid sense of self and individuality, that since infancy is felt to be lacking.
Chapter 2 explores On Not Being Able to Paint (1950), Milner's study of painting, drawing, creativity, and its impediments. Written and published some years after Milner first started practicing as a ...psychoanalyst, this chapter considers Milner's autobiographical cure at the site of visual expression. In her experiments with painting and free associative drawing, Milner attends to the relational world of the painter for what it can tell her about her earliest relationships and its subsequent shaping of her adult psyche. Through drawing and painting experiments, Milner develops the concepts of the "pliable medium" and the "frame," terms that describe the attuning capabilities of visual mark-making. This chapter illuminates how Milner's self-explorations at the site of drawing go on to influence her clinical work with her patients and how her analytic technique extends to encouraging her patients' own acts of drawing both inside and outside the consulting room.
