A Life of One's Own
1st Edition
Published on 1. May 2024
Book
Hardback
226 pages
978-1-032-75759-9 (ISBN)
Description
'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.
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.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
General, Postgraduate, Professional Practice & Development, Undergraduate Advanced, and Undergraduate Core
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Weight
371 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-032-75759-9 (9781032757599)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Marion Milner (1900-1998) was a distinguished British psychoanalyst, educationalist, autobiographer and artist.
Content
Introduction to the Routledge Classics Edition Rachel Bowlby Acknowledgements Prefatory Note Preface 1. First Questions 2. Keeping a Diary 3. Exploring the Hinterland 4. The Coming and Going of Delight 5. Searching for a Purpose 6. Searching for a Rule 7. Two Ways of Looking 8. Discovering that Thought can be Blind 9. Watching the Antics of Blind Thinking 10. The Escape from Blind Thinking 11. Fear of a Dragon 12. More Outcasts of Thought 13. Relaxing 14. Cart-horse or Pegasus? 15. Discovery of the 'Other' 16. Retrospect. Epilogue Afterword Index