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AN EXPERIMENT IN LEISURE
What is it that stops people from knowing what they want? How often do we wonder where we are going and what our world is all about?Written in 1936 as a companion piece to A Life of One 's Own, An Experiment in Leisure further charts Marion Milner 's illuminating and rewarding investigation into how we lead our lives. Instead of drawing on her daily diary, she turns to memory images images not only from her own life but also from books, mythology, travel and religion that seem to point to a suspension of ordinary, everyday awareness. From this condition of emptiness springs an increasing imaginative appreciation both of being alive and of the world we live in.With a new introduction by Maud Ellmann, An Experiment in Leisure remains a great adventure in thinking and living and will be essential reading for all those from a literary, an artistic, a historical, an educational or a psychoanalytic/psychotherapeutic background.
Hardcover
First published August 1, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 25, 2012
I read this book under her pen-name of Joanna Field many years ago. I may have already added it to my list of books under that name. I found all three of her books to be unique, deep, thoughtful, helpful and very spiritual. She is not writing from any particular 'ism' but simply as a creative, intuitive, intelligent person seeking greater consciousness and inner peace. She seems absolutely amazing to me, and could easily have started her own esoteric school or self-help movement.
January 5, 2025
Changed my life
September 17, 2025
What a page turner!
January 17, 2025
I love Milner's direct style, the way she doesn't shut out the reader by speaking within the closed language of psychological analysis - and especially how she uses her own life, and her own psyche, to explore rather than to charge forward with a hypothesis to prove.
This, the second of her three 'Joanna Field' books, is a direct sequel to the first, 'A Life of One's Own'. Here, Milner is specifically asking herself what she can do to ensure that the time she has available to herself, for hobbies, in free time, away from the necessary pursuit of earning enough to live on, can be used fruitfully and satisfactorily, rather than as a distraction or to be frittered away. The book is a diary, almost, of her journey through this issue, reading and note-making, studying her own diary entries and reflections, to develop a better understanding of her unconscious and a way to live well with it.
Along the way there are some great observations about relationships, about the desire to subject yourself to another force - a religion, a system of belief, another person - and the consequences of casting people as symbols or images and trying to live out these delusions, or as Milner calls them, "blind thoughts". Finally she settles on an understanding of the image: that there are things we alight on that seem to stand for a particular contradiction inside us, an image that represents not one thing in our subconscious but two things at odds, often around the desire for control or to be controlled, to be God and to be annihilated into nothingness at once. The idea that to become a victim of sacrifice is an attractive image because it allows us to feel powerless and powerful at once, to be a (powerful-looking) martyr destroyed by (evil) powers, absolved of our own inner badness or evil/dominating thoughts, struck me especially.
In concentrating at last on images, and on letting yourself relax into a feeling of zen-like nothingness to allow parts of your subconscious to bubble up organically, Milner sets up her third, great, book, 'On Not Being Able to Paint'. I'm interested to see where she goes with that relationship with the image!
An enjoyable read, perhaps at times a little simple or repetitive, but overall impactful. I'd give it 3.5 stars really - it's not as good as A Life of One's Own- but rounded up here to 4.
This, the second of her three 'Joanna Field' books, is a direct sequel to the first, 'A Life of One's Own'. Here, Milner is specifically asking herself what she can do to ensure that the time she has available to herself, for hobbies, in free time, away from the necessary pursuit of earning enough to live on, can be used fruitfully and satisfactorily, rather than as a distraction or to be frittered away. The book is a diary, almost, of her journey through this issue, reading and note-making, studying her own diary entries and reflections, to develop a better understanding of her unconscious and a way to live well with it.
Along the way there are some great observations about relationships, about the desire to subject yourself to another force - a religion, a system of belief, another person - and the consequences of casting people as symbols or images and trying to live out these delusions, or as Milner calls them, "blind thoughts". Finally she settles on an understanding of the image: that there are things we alight on that seem to stand for a particular contradiction inside us, an image that represents not one thing in our subconscious but two things at odds, often around the desire for control or to be controlled, to be God and to be annihilated into nothingness at once. The idea that to become a victim of sacrifice is an attractive image because it allows us to feel powerless and powerful at once, to be a (powerful-looking) martyr destroyed by (evil) powers, absolved of our own inner badness or evil/dominating thoughts, struck me especially.
In concentrating at last on images, and on letting yourself relax into a feeling of zen-like nothingness to allow parts of your subconscious to bubble up organically, Milner sets up her third, great, book, 'On Not Being Able to Paint'. I'm interested to see where she goes with that relationship with the image!
An enjoyable read, perhaps at times a little simple or repetitive, but overall impactful. I'd give it 3.5 stars really - it's not as good as A Life of One's Own- but rounded up here to 4.
May 1, 2025
Another heroic introverted quest by Marion.
Harder for me to read than A Life Of One’s own.
Marion discovers how important knowing your real self is to living “reasonably” that is being able to think clearly, escape infantile or habitual bad moods and just enjoy being alive.
This is especially important for people (like me) who are more inward focused. Nothing in this book would be interesting or useful to an outward focused “man of action”.
Not many people on earth would either want to or b able to write a book like this. This is really hard, confusing inner work, even for someone as smart and as educated as Marion. And it’s even harder to read. Some chapters are just so “right brain” as she casually associates Jung, Blake, Freud, Greek myths, Yeats with personal diaries, dreams, fairy tales it made my head spin and occasionally lost interest.
Bonus points for admitting she didn’t understand certain concepts by Jung and Freud
Harder for me to read than A Life Of One’s own.
Marion discovers how important knowing your real self is to living “reasonably” that is being able to think clearly, escape infantile or habitual bad moods and just enjoy being alive.
This is especially important for people (like me) who are more inward focused. Nothing in this book would be interesting or useful to an outward focused “man of action”.
Not many people on earth would either want to or b able to write a book like this. This is really hard, confusing inner work, even for someone as smart and as educated as Marion. And it’s even harder to read. Some chapters are just so “right brain” as she casually associates Jung, Blake, Freud, Greek myths, Yeats with personal diaries, dreams, fairy tales it made my head spin and occasionally lost interest.
Bonus points for admitting she didn’t understand certain concepts by Jung and Freud
October 23, 2025
Of the three books of Milner’s I have read so far (this, A Life of One’s Own, and On Not Being Able to Paint), this one has affected me the most profoundly, and to that extent I suppose it is my favorite. But it has affected me for profoundly personal reasons - it has illuminated a lot of images and obsessions in my life that have always felt, even in my most cogent moments, somewhat mysterious to me. That will not interest the average goodreader, so let me just say this:
If you start reading this book, you may find yourself (about 80 pages in, let’s say) thinking, “Wait, why am I reading this fairy tale, and why have I been reading about sacrifices, and gods, and God, and magic? Isn’t this book supposed to be about finding out the reasons for not being able to enjoy one’s leisure time?” If you have this thought, you should ask yourself - Do you feel that your leisure time is important, perhaps the most important part of your day, even if you don’t always know how to use it wisely? Or are your leisure activities just something you do to pass the time in between the more obviously important things that take up your day?
If you answer yes to the first question, then you will immediately see the connection, and the need for myths all your own to buttress those activities. In this case should definitely keep reading - the book will almost certainly change your life. If you answer yes to the second question, then I’m not sure what to recommend you do (you being such a different person from me), except that maybe this book will make you stop and think differently if you decide to give it a chance.
If you start reading this book, you may find yourself (about 80 pages in, let’s say) thinking, “Wait, why am I reading this fairy tale, and why have I been reading about sacrifices, and gods, and God, and magic? Isn’t this book supposed to be about finding out the reasons for not being able to enjoy one’s leisure time?” If you have this thought, you should ask yourself - Do you feel that your leisure time is important, perhaps the most important part of your day, even if you don’t always know how to use it wisely? Or are your leisure activities just something you do to pass the time in between the more obviously important things that take up your day?
If you answer yes to the first question, then you will immediately see the connection, and the need for myths all your own to buttress those activities. In this case should definitely keep reading - the book will almost certainly change your life. If you answer yes to the second question, then I’m not sure what to recommend you do (you being such a different person from me), except that maybe this book will make you stop and think differently if you decide to give it a chance.
August 28, 2019
Fantastic, Marion Milner is ace. So many different things at the same time, her books.
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February 16, 2022I... didn't love this
December 2, 2015
Author aka Joanna Field.
January 18, 2022
Marion Milner (writing here as Joanna Field) is an extraordinary and thoughtful thinker, perceiver & writer.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews