MARION MILNER THE LIFE Artist, poet, educationalist and autobiographer, Marion Milner is considered one of the most original psychoanalytic thinkers, whose life (1900–1998) spans a century of radical change. Marion Milner: The Life is the first biography of this extraordinary woman. It introduces Milner and her works to the reader through her family, colleagues and, above all, through her books, chart - ing their evolution and development as well as their critical reception and contribution to current twenty-first century debates and discourses. In this book Emma Letley draws on primary sources, including the newly opened Marion Milner Collection at the archives of the British Psycho- analytical Society in London, as well as interviews and the re-contextualised series of Milner texts. She traces the process of Milner’s writing of her books, her discovery of psychoanalysis, her training and her place in that world from the 1940s onwards. The book also includes discussion of Milner’s connection with D.W. Winnicott and her emergence as a most individual member of the Independent Group. Marion Milner: The Life shows how Milner’s Personal Notebooks offer fascinating insights into her relationships, both personal and professional, and into many of her important ideas on creativity, the body–mind relationship, her revolutionary ideas on education and her particular personality as a clinician working with both children and adults. Further, Letley explores Milner’s literary character from her very early diaries and narratives to her last book written in her nineties, published in 2012. Marion Milner: The Life places Marion Milner firmly in her Edwardian family setting and contains new material from primary sources, including a new view of her collegial connections. It provides a wealth of material on her life and works that will be invaluable to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, art psychotherapists, students, those involved with life writing and autobiography and the general reader. Emma Letley is a writer and psychoanalytic psychotherapist. She trained with the Arbours Association and is currently in practice at King’s College London and in private practice in Notting Hill Gate. She is Series Editor of the Marion Milner works (Routledge, 2010–2012). This page intentionally left blank MARION MILNER THE LIFE Emma Letley First published 2014 by Routledge 27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2014 Emma Letley The right of Emma Letley to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him/her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Letley, Emma. Marion Milner: the life/Emma Letley. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Milner, Marion, 1900–1998. 2. Psychoanalysts— Great Britain—Biography. I. Title. BF109.M55L48 2013 150.19′5092–dc23 [B] 2012050424 ISBN: 978–0-415–56737–4 (hbk) ISBN: 978–0-415–56738–1 (pbk) ISBN: 978–0-203–76712–2 (ebk) Typeset in Garamond Three by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK In affectionate memory of John Milner who very sadly died when this book was in production This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS List of illustrations viii Acknowledgements and introduction x List of abbreviations xiii 1 Edwardian home: early life 1900–1927 1 2 A Life of One’s Own 18 3 An Experiment in Leisure 31 4 The road to psychoanalysis 40 5 ‘A huge Catherine wheel’: Donald Winnicott 51 6 On not being able to . 63 7 Influences, family and friends: 1950s–late 1970s 89 8 Servant of a process 104 9 ‘The facts of art’: Milner and art psychotherapy 127 10 Beads of her own: travels inner and outer 132 11 Forty-four years of psychoanalysis: The Suppressed Madness of Sane Men 151 12 Bothered by . the 1990s 167 Notes 187 Bibliography 206 Index 213 vii ILLUSTRATIONS 1.1 Shooting party 1880s with MM’s mother and sister 2 1.2 Nina Blackett with her children, Winifred, Patrick and Marion 4 1.3 Arthur Stuart Blackett (MM’s father) 5 1.4 Nina Blackett in eighteenth-century fancy dress 6 1.5 The Blackett children – Marion, Patrick and Winifred – and Mickey the dog 8 1.6 MM’s maternal grandparents at Fleet 9 1.7 The Oaks, Kenley 10 1.8 Peatmoor, home of MM’s maternal grandparents at Fleet 11 1.9 Patrick Blackett 16 5.1 Winnicott’s ‘squiggle’ of Mother and Baby 57 6.1 Heath fire 64 6.2 Beech trees 64 6.3 Two Jugs – an image shared with DWW 65 6.4 Bursting Seed-Pod 79 7.1 John Milner at Oxford 90 7.2 MM at the Drian Gallery, 1971 91 7.3 John Milner’s wedding, 1960 96 7.4 MM ‘The Hens’ 100 8.1 Susan’s drawing of mother and child 109 11.1 Engraving from Blake’s Job – first illustration 154 11.2 Engraving from Blake’s Job – last illustration 155 Illustrations in the plate section 1 From Mollie Blackett’s Nature Diary (pen and ink drawings) 2 MM’s 15-year old picture of the dragon 3 MM in 1924 4 Nina Farhi 5 MM, Mary Pears (Reid) and friends viii ILLUSTRATIONS 6 MM and Nicola Pears 7 MM Self-Portrait 8 The Angry Parrot (from ONBAP) 9 MM in garden at Provost Road 10 MM collage: ‘The Listeners’ 11 MM collage: ‘The Green Baby’ 12 Collage for MM by Desy Safán-Gerard 13 MM’s room shortly after she died; Suppressed Madness of Sane Men in front of her chair ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND INTRODUCTION ‘I don’t wish it to be legible,’ the young Milner wrote in her notebook early in her training analysis, and her handwriting bears this out. Beautiful, wonderfully dressed and disarmingly private, Milner was proudly English. She loved the streams of visitors, many of them Americans, who came flocking to her door, drawn by her books – small pyramids of fan letters attest to her enduring charm. So many people knew her through her books, and this is one way the biographer must also meet her. I, too, knew her through the books, through a reading – in my twenties – of her great book on creativity, On Not Being Able to Paint; to find her through people – not through books – was more difficult. In her autobiographical book of her (and the twentieth century’s) eighties, Eternity’s Sunrise, she wonders why there are so few ‘beads’ about people – there are images, places, objects of culture and inner joys with people, but somehow this is not the point. Ironically, this biography is about showing how and why this might be. Milner is surrounded by a ring fence of set pieces – which conceal – and by colleagues who are respectfully silent about a certain biographical reticence. Her patients, of course, have benefitted from this legacy of discretion. I do not know (and have not sought vigorously to find out) who ‘Susan’ is or where she might be. Milner loved and valued silence, the great emptiness, and to some extent this is what remains. And yet the silence can be broken – and I am, first of all, enormously grateful to those who have felt able to talk about Marion Milner. First of all, my thanks must go to Milner’s literary executors, her son, John Milner and Margaret Walters, her close friend of many years, who have allowed me to have access to papers and letters, art work and photographs; and then to her family. The company of Milner’s son John has been one of the great pleasures of this book. An invitation to his seventy-fifth birthday in Harting, a place significant to Milner from the 1940s onwards, was the start of many congenial meetings; it was also a boost to the project of writing the biography and the preparation of Milner’s six books for re-issue in a new edition, completed in 2012 with the publication of her posthumous, long-awaited autobiography Bothered by Alligators. x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND INTRODUCTION The kindness of Milner’s niece, Giovanna Bloor, helped me more than I can say; on a visit to her home in North Wales, she provided me with much detail on the wider family background and history, including invaluable family trees. MM’s grandsons, Giles and Quentin, have also been very kind, and an early visit to Quentin in Devon allowed me glimpses of MM’s art, her couch (one of them) and some vignettes of her life as a grandmother. In the early stages of the work, Moris and the late Nina Farhi welcomed me with the greatest warmth and encouragement, Nina’s own work being inspirational in continuing Milner’s legacy. I would like to single out the kindness of Pearl King in seeing me at the beginning of this project despite declining health. Mary Reid (Pears) I have known for over forty years; fortunately for me and for the book, it turned out that she was a close friend of Milner’s for much of the middle part of her life, and her recollections over the years have been invaluable.