On Being Able to Create: Reflections on Marion Milner’s On Not Being Able to Paint

Great artists have not cornered the market on creativity. Art can flourish in the way we live our lives, as well as in museums and concert halls, art galleries and jazz clubs. After discussing some of the difficulties of doing this (e.g., being trapped in a continual cycle of overdrive and cognitive oversaturation), this essay explores one way that the visionary psychoanalyst Marion Milner pointed to about how to facilitate it. Drawing on her views of the creative process—an integration of a “masculine” and a “feminine” state of being—we’ll explore how to facilitate it. Milner’s greatest contribution is arguably her showing rather than saying what it is.