The Milner Method: Marion Milner and Alison Bechdel's autobiographical cures

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.