An Experiment in Leisure (Routledge Classics)

Milner, Marion

ISBN 10: 1032757531 / ISBN 13: 9781032757537

Published by Routledge, 2024

About this Item

Seller Inventory # I-9781032757537

Bibliographic Details

• Title: An Experiment in Leisure (Routledge Classics)
• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1032757531
• ISBN 13: 9781032757537
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

'Before I began this experiment I had always been haunted by the feeling that the surface of life, what everyone said about it, was quite different from the reality of life, that the important things that were happening all the time were on the whole quite different from what was said about them.' - Marion Milner

What is it that stops people from knowing what they want? How much of our experience is shaped by images, symbols, and early memories – and do such things help or hinder one becoming an adult? Written in 1936, An Experiment in Leisure continues Marion Milner’s unique and compelling investigation into how we lead our lives, complementing the account she began in A Life of One’s Own.

Attempting to understand the gap between what she memorably describes as ‘the poverty of words and the reality of living’, she draws on memory images – in books, mythology, religious experience, travel, and even going to the theatre – that seem to point to a suspension of ordinary, everyday awareness. From this state of emptiness springs an increasing imaginative appreciation of being alive and, as Milner concludes, of being a woman.

With a new Foreword by Akshi Singh, An Experiment in Leisure remains a striking and captivating adventure in thinking and living with uncertainty, whose insights remain fresh and relevant today.

About the Author

Marion Milner (1900–1998) was a distinguished British psychoanalyst, educationalist, autobiographer, and artist.