Marion Milner, “A Life of One’s Own”
(Feb 1, 1900 – May 29, 1998)
It’s interesting to me that this lady wrote this book around 1934… and that what she depicts is herself moved from being detached from her inner life by all the “shoulds” she even left her intuitive (female) traits to adopt the logical (male) ones, due to her pursuit of success in the scientific realm of psychiatry.
She makes a case for this little by little, here is an example:
“I had been continually exhorted to define my purpose in life, but I was now beginning to doubt whether life might not be too complex a thing to be kept within the bounds of a single formulated purpose, whether it would not burst its way out, or if the purpose were too strong, perhaps grow distorted like an oak whose trunk has been encircled with an iron band. I began to guess that my self’s need was for an equilibrium, for sun, but not too much, for rain, but not always… So I began to have an idea of my life, not as the slow shaping of achievement to fit my preconceived purposes, but as the gradual discovery and growth of a purpose which I did not know. I wrote: “It will mean walking in a fog for a bit, but it’s the only way which is not a presumption, forcing the self into a theory.
Running Down Vimy 