Walsh, Julie (2023) A method of her own: tracing memory in Marion Milner's The Hands of the Living God. Textual Practice, 38 (1). pp. 53-83. DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2023.2287359
Walsh, Julie (2023) A method of her own: tracing memory in Marion Milner's The Hands of the Living God. Textual Practice, 38 (1). pp. 53-83. DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2023.2287359
Walsh, Julie (2023) A method of her own: tracing memory in Marion Milner's The Hands of the Living God. Textual Practice, 38 (1). pp. 53-83. DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2023.2287359
Abstract
This article contributes to the growing critical literature that situates the British Psychoanalyst and pioneer of life writing Marion Milner within the modernist tradition, not only as a Freudian but as someone who extends the modernist project through her studies of technique and method. Focusing on the practice of drawing in two key Milner texts – On Not Being Able to Paint (1950) and The Hands of the Living God (1969) – I explore Milner’s clinical and aesthetic preoccupation with space and spacing. By way of Milner’s somewhat distanced dialogue with Freud and much more intimate dialogue with Winnicott, as well as via a consideration of material from the Marion Miner archives, I demonstrate how Milner’s technical and clinical praxis offers an alternative articulation to the model of deep memory. Specifically, through her development of a spatial idiom, I propose that Milner’s dedication to working at the surface – including tracing and copying her patient’s drawings – permits mimicry to stand in for memory so that the lost background of her patient Susan can be re-drawn.
Item Type: | Article |
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Uncontrolled Keywords: | Psychoanalysis; Marion Milner; D.W. Winnicott; memory trace; creativity; drawing as writing; the spatial turn; depth and surface models of memory |
SWORD Depositor: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Date Deposited: | 13 Jun 2023 15:15 |
Last Modified: | 16 May 2024 21:54 |
URI: | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/35795 |
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Filename: A method of her own tracing memory in Marion Milner s The Hands of the Living God.pdf
Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0