The Suppressed Madness of Sane Men: Forty-Four Years of Exploring Psychoanalysis

by Marion Milner

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.

Genres: Psychology

ebook

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Paul Johnston · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book and got a lot out of it. It is a chronological selection of essays with commentary from the author and gives a good picture of Marion Milner's preoccupations over her 44 year career as an analyst. It took me a bit of time to get into the book, although it was interesting to learn that Milner was supervised by Melanie Klein for one of her early child patients. Milner's had a deep interest in creativity which she argues can be expressed in a wide variety of forms, indeed, she seems to go beyond Winnicott and suggest that if we are to have a creative relationship with the world, we need to blur the subject/object distinction so that the world does not seem entirely other to us but has an admixture of us in it, so that we as it were partly create it. Otherwise it risks standing over us as something cold and empty that can then seem dark and threatening. But if we do not feel that there is an iron me/not-me distinction, then paradoxically we can both feel more fully ourselves and feel truly in touch with the world. When the painter ceases to look at an object with the narrow focus of critical attention but loses themselves in it, they can have an experience that brings them in touch with the creative forces inside them but also with the world outside them. So an interesting perspective - similar to Winnicott but not quite the same!