A method of her own: tracing memory in Marion Milner's The Hands of the Living God

Abstract

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.