Spirals, whorls, and faulty containers: The psychoanalysis of form in the art of Marion Milner’s The Hands of the Living God and the sculpture of Louise Bourgeois

This article looks at the significance of the recurring form of the spiral in the sculpture of artist Louise Bourgeois and the drawings of a patient (“Susan”) of the psychoanalyst Marion Milner. I explore how through an analysis of the diverse images of spirals in both women’s work we find expressions of their earliest psychic experiences that exist prior to language, experiences that seem to demand expression through visual representation rather than in the customary talking cure. In their creation of spiral images, Bourgeois and Susan create art objects that can be held both physically and mentally in the hands and mind of another, giving a material solidity to their own subjectivities and identities that otherwise feel insubstantial and unreal. The making of visual art is thus a crucial part of a therapeutic labour that takes place outside of the consulting room and on the page, canvas or artist’s studio.