On not being able to paint

267 Pages·2010·2.05 MB·English

by  Letley

On Not Being Able to Paint
Milner’s great study, first published in 1950, discusses the nature of
creativity and those forces which prevent its expression. In focus-
ing on her own beginner’s efforts to draw and paint, she analyses
not the mysterious and elusive ability of the genius but – as the title
suggests – the all too common and distressing situation of ‘not
being able’ to create.
With a new introduction by Janet Sayers this edition of On Not
Being Able to Paint brings the text to the present generation of
readers in the fields of psychoanalysis, education and all those,
specialist and general audiences alike, with an interest or involve-
ment in the creative process and those impulses impeding it in
many fields.
Marion Milner (1900–1998) was a distinguished British psycho-
analyst, educationalist, autobiographer and artist.
Janet Sayers is Professor of Psychoanalytic Psychology at the
University of Kent in Canterbury where she works as an NHS
psychotherapist. Her books include Mothering Psychoanalysis
(1991), Freudian Tales (1997), Kleinians (2000), Freud’s Art (2007),
and recent completion of a biography of Adrian Stokes.
Emma Letley is a writer, academic and psychoanalytic psycho-
therapist, trained with the Arbours Association, and practising in
Notting Hill Gate and at King’s College London. She is the
biographer of Marion Milner.

On Not Being Able to Paint
Marion Milner
New introduction by Janet Sayers
Series Editor: Emma Letley
Literary Executors: John Milner and Margaret Walters
First published 1950 by Heinemann Educational Books Ltd
Reprinted 2010 by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
© 2010 The Estate of Marion Milner by arrangement with John Milner
and Margaret Walters c/o Paterson Marsh Ltd.
Introduction © Janet Sayers
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.
This publication has been produced with paper manufactured to strict
environmental standards and with pulp derived from sustainable forests.
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
Milner, Marion Blackett.
On not being able to paint / Marion Milner ;
edited by Emma Letley.
p. cm.
Originally published: London : Heinemann, 1950.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Painting. 2. Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.)
I. Letley, Emma. II. Title.
ND1140.M5 2010
750.1′9—dc22
2010025616
ISBN 0-203-83365-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 978–0–415–55076–5 (hbk)
ISBN 978–0–415–55078–9 (pbk)
To my son and his generation and may they not take as long as
I have in finding out about these matters

Contents
List of illustrations ix
Foreword by Anna Freud xiii
Introduction xvii
Note to second edition xxi
New introduction by Janet Sayers xxiii
PART I
The emergence of the free drawings 1
(Firing of the imagination)
1 What the eye likes 3
2 Being separate and being together 10
3 Outline and the solid earth 17
4 The plunge into colour 26
5 The necessity of illusion 31
PART II
The content of the free drawings 39
(Crucifying the imagination)
6 Monsters within and without 41
7 Disillusion and hating 53
8 Preserving what one loves 65
viii CONTENTS
PART III
The method of the free drawings 81
(Incarnating the imagination)
9 Reciprocity and ordered freedom 83
10 Refusal of reciprocity 90
11 Ideals and the fatal prejudice 101
12 Rhythm and the freedom of the free drawings 110
13 The concentration of the body 123
PART IV
The use of the free drawings 131
(The image as mediator)
14 The role of the medium 133
15 The role of images 141
PART V
The use of painting 147
16 Painting and living 149
17 Painting as making real 159
Postscript: What it amounts to 169
APPENDIX 173
I The ordering of chaos 173
II The anal aspect of the parrot’s egg 174
III Infantile prototypes of creativity 178
IV Changes in the sense of self 179
V Rhythm relaxation and the orgasm 182
VI Painting and symbols 184
VII The two kinds of thinking 188
VIII Painting and imitation 190
IX A place for absent-mindedness 191
Bibliography to first edition 194
Bibliography to second edition 195
Description of original drawings 198
Index 201
Illustrations
The Angry Parrot frontispiece
1 Mrs. Punch 5
2 ‘Beautiful Young Girl’ 6
3 ‘Summer Morning’ 7
4 ‘Summer Beeches’ 8
5 Nursery 11
6 Spanish Garden 12
7 Milkman 15
8 Two Jugs 19
9 Thunder over The Sea 21
10 Earth (a, b, c, d) 22
11 Sea Wall (a, b) 23
12 Blasting Witch 44
13 Frugal Mouse 45
14 Innocent Donkey 46
15 The Demanding Bottle 47
16 ‘Freedom’ 48
17 Lamb in Wolf’s Clothing 50
18 Salome 51
19 Macbeth and the Witches 54
20 Skeleton under the Sea 55
21 Ape in the Garden of Eden 60
22 Comment 61
23 The Escaping Bear 63
24 Small Porgies 69
25 Horrified Tadpole 69
26 Drawing without a Name 71
27 The Pregnant Butcher 73