A Life of One's Own

By Marion Milner and Joanna Field

Book Overview

'This is what I really want. I want to discover ways to discriminate the important things in human life. I want to find ways of getting past this blind fumbling with existence.' - Marion Milner, from A Life of One's Own.

How often do we really ask ourselves, 'What will make me happy? What do I really want from life?' In A Life of One's Own Marion Milner, a renowned British psychoanalyst, artist and autobiographer, takes us on an extraordinary and compelling seven-year inward journey to discover what it is that makes her happy.

On its first publication, W. H. Auden found the book 'as exciting as a detective story' and, as Milner searches out clues, the reader quickly becomes involved in the chase. Using her own personal diaries, she analyses moments of everyday life that can bring surprising joy, such as walking, listening to music, and drawing. She also records, in a disarmingly clear and insightful manner, the struggle between the urge to order and control one's thoughts and standing back to let them wander where they may.

A pioneering account of lived experience that also anticipates the contemporary phenomenon of mindfulness, A Life of One's Own is a great adventure in thinking and living whose insights remain as fresh today as they were on the book's first publication in the 1930s.

This Routledge Classics edition includes a revised Introduction by Rachel Bowlby.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1032757590
• ISBN13: 9781032757599
• Release Date: May 2024
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
• Length: 276 Pages

Customer Reviews

great

Joanna Field is nom de plume of the well known British psychoanalyst Marion Milner. In this "psychological memoire" she reveals a 20-something woman living a somewhat charmed bohemian life of the early 1930-ies - travels across Yorkshire, Tuscany and Virginia/Massachusetts are superimposed on adventures and explorations of inner landscapes composed of dreams, memories, reflections ...and the unknown. The book, written in the form of a diary, is an excellent guide for anyone about to embark on the rewarding, if treacherous, journey of self discovery. Milner figured out, pretty much by herself, key elements of what these days passes as somatic psychotherapy. The art of listening to the body, to fears hiding in misty waters of the unconscious, and of opening to the delight that descends when we, often unsuspectingly and all too fleetingly, are graced by the authentic experience of living, are described in fascinating detail. How does one maintain authenticity when being with other people, what makes us happy, what brings us the sense of direction, how to observe thoughts, emotions and gestures, how to navigate the madscape of mental activity, how "facts" distill themselves out of the boundless background of the unknown, that immense kaleidoscope that keeps changing with our motives- in other words, what IS perception and what awareness... this book lays it all out in a human, so human and irresistible way. After the first chapter I felt an immediate kinship, affection and respect for this woman who died a long time ago, yet left us with this scintilla of honesty and insight. Highly recommended.

A journey through thought

What really makes you happy? This question set Marion Milner, writing under the pseudonym Joanna Field, on an inward journey of discovery through the subtle and fleeting processes of perception, thought and emotion over seven years. In this book, she writes a kind of diary summary, in the simplest and most human terms, of her psychological detective work. The result is intriguing, beautiful, energising and profound.

A wonderful journey of self-discovery

This is a remarkable and inspiring book. This book is beautifully written, and would be useful for somebody who, like the author, is on a journey of self-discovery.