Milner’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 analyses not the mysterious and elusive ability of the genius but – as the title suggests – the all too common and distressing situation of ‘not being able’ to create. With a new introduction by Janet Sayers, this edition of _On Not Being Able to Paint_ brings the text to (...) the present generation of readers in the fields of psychoanalysis, education and all those, specialist and general audiences alike, with an interest or involvement in the creative process and those impulses impeding it in many fields. (shrink)

Marion Milner introduces this edited collection of her papers from 1942 to 1977 with a fascinating biographical account of her development in psychoanalysis. The collection includes her classic papers on symbolism.

Usually after a night's rest I would be back again in my vague optimism, never considering that my life was my own to live, ...

What is it that stops people from knowing what they want? How often do we wonder where we are going and what our world is all about? Written in 1936 as a companion piece to _A Life of One’s Own_, _ An Experiment in Leisure_ further charts Marion Milner’s illuminating and rewarding investigation into how we lead our lives. Instead of drawing on her daily diary, she turns to memory images – images not only from her own life but also (...) from books, mythology, travel and religion that seem to point to a suspension of ordinary, everyday awareness. From this condition of emptiness springs an increasing imaginative appreciation both of being alive and of the world we live in. With a new introduction by Maud Ellmann, _An Experiment in Leisure_ remains a great adventure in thinking and living and will be essential reading for all those from a literary, an artistic, a historical, an educational or a psychoanalytic/psychotherapeutic background. (shrink)

Following 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, she builds up a store of ‘bead memories.’ A carved duck, a sprig of asphodel, moments captured in her travels in Greece, Kashmir and Israel, circus clowns, a painting _-_ each makes up a 'bead' that has a warmth or glow which comes in response to asking the simple question: What is the most (...) important thing that happened yesterday? From these beads – sacred, horrific, profane, funny – grows a sense of an ‘answering activity’, the result of turning one’s attention inwards to experience real joy. What Marion Milner conveys so vividly and inspirationally is her lifelong intention to live as completely as possible in the moment. With a new introduction by Hugh Haughton, _Eternity’s Sunrise_ will be essential reading for all those interested in reflecting on the nature of their own happiness – whether readers from a literary, an artistic, a historical, an educational or a psychoanalytic/psychotherapeutic background. (shrink)