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III. Abc. Marion Milner and Contemporary Elaborations by Alvarez and Parsons Marion Milner’s interests parallel Winnicott’s accounts of potential space and transitional phenomena and how they enable the use of symbols through the creative play that initially opens up in the space between mother and baby . Her article, “Aspects of symbolism in the comprehension of the Not-Self” was published in the IJP festschrift for Melanie Klein’s 70th birthday (1952). Republished in New Directions in Psychoanalysis (1955) edited by Klein, Heimann, Money Kyrle, its title had become, ‘The role of illusion in symbol formation.’ Indirectly both titles take up a theme about the origins of human creativity and its links with the constitution of the self, and the distinction between Me and Not Me that Winnicott insists is fundamental to thinking symbolically. While Milner’s original title indicated a different emphasis from Klein through its mention of the NOT Self, a formulation associated with Winnicott, the addition of ‘illusion’ deepened this association, harkening back to Klein’s 1930 paper, “The importance of symbol formation in the development of the ego” and her claims there for the ego’s early development, the identification of one object with another as the basis of symbolism, and symbolism as the basis of all talents, including sublimation. Milner offered a more complex view of the process of symbol formation by amplifying one aspect of Ernest Jones’s argument in his paper on ‘Symbolism’ (1916). Although Jones and later, Klein, stress loss and fear/anxiety as the major reasons for the infant’s shift of interest from the original primary object to a secondary object, emotionally felt as the same, Jones recognised there is a need to establish a relation to reality in “the easiest possible way” (quoted in Milner, 1987, p. 84). For him, while symbolism originates in prohibition, it also acknowledges other wishes and needs, what Milner will describe as a need to endow the world with something of the self. Together with Sachs and Rank, Jones summarises this process somewhat dismissively as "only a symbol," whereas the British independents are interested in the symbol in and for itself . For them the symbol is an original form of expression, a part of prelogical thinking that gathers together an inner organisation linked to the establishment of identity in difference. They question the emphasis on symbol formation as an essentially defensive activity aimed at avoiding conflict and unease, since such a view overlooks the newborn’s curiosity and interest in the surrounding world. A more extended understanding of symbols links them to the creative process emphasising the newness, aliveness and enrichment they represent. Milner’s clinical work with Klein’s grandson, Simon, posed questions regarding the roots of the self, its origins in the encounter with the environment and the development of the capacity to symbolise itself. She proposed ‘that the basic identifications that make it possible to find new objects, to find the familiar in the unfamiliar, require an ability to tolerate a temporary loss of sense of self, a temporary giving up of the discriminating ego which stands apart and tries to see things objectively and rationally and without emotional colouring (1987, p. 97).
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