Otto Rank

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Otto Rank (April 22, 1884 – October 31, 1939) was an Austrian psychologist. Born in Vienna as Otto Rosenfeld, he was also one of Sigmund Freud's closest aides and later colleagues and finally critic.

1 In the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society
2 Post-Vienna Life and Work
3 Influence
4 Major publications
5 References
6 External links

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In the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society

Rank came to Freud's Wednesday discussion circle from a non-medical background. From 1906 he became secretary of the emerging Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Freud described him as "a pleasant, intelligent youngster ... qualified in mechanical engineering ... studying Latin and Greek for admission to university... I expect a good deal of him once he has got himself an education" (letter to Jung, 5th March 1908). Rank obtained a PhD in 1912.

Rank was one of Freud's six close collaborators who were brought together in a secret "committee" or "ring" to defend the psycho-analytic mainstream as the disputes with Adler and then Jung developed. Rank was the most prolific author in the "Ring" besides Freud himself, extending psychoanalytic theory to the study of legend, myth, art, and other works of creativity. He worked particularly closely with Freud, not just in the secretarial role, but also in contributing additional material to later editions of "The Interpretation of Dreams".

In 1924 Rank published The Trauma of Birth, exploring how art, myth, religion, philosophy and therapy were illuminated by separation anxiety in the “phase before the development of the Oedipus complex” (p. 216). But there was no such phase in Freud’s theories. The Oedipus complex, Freud explained tirelessly, was the nucleus of the neurosis and the foundational source of all art, myth, religion, philosophy, therapy – indeed of all human culture and civilization. It was the first time that anyone in the inner circle had dared to suggest that the Oedipus complex might not be the supreme causal factor in psychoanalysis. It was also the first time that anyone in the inner circle had dared to suggest that there was a “pre-Oedipal” complex – a term that did not exist at that time. Rank was the first to use the term “pre-Oedipal” in a public psychoanalytic forum in 1925 (Rank, 1996, p. 43). In the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, Rank will be credited with coining this term, which is now mistakenly thought to have been introduced by Freud in 1932.

After some hesitation, Freud distanced himself from The Trauma of Birth, signalling to other members of his inner circle that Rank was perilously close to anti-Oedipal heresy. Confronted with Freud’s decisive opposition, Rank chose to resign in protest from his positions as Vice-President of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, director of Freud’s publishing house, and editor of Imago and Zeitschrift.

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Post-Vienna Life and Work

In May 1926, Rank moved to Paris where he became an analyst for artists such as Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin and lectured at the Sorbonne (Lieberman, 1985).

In France and later in America, Rank enjoyed great success as a therapist and writer. Travelling frequently between France and America, Rank lectured at universities such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Pennsylvania on object-relational, experiential and “here-and-now” psychotherapy, art, the creative will, and “neurosis as a failure in creativity” (Rank, 1996).

He died in New York City in 1939 from a kidney infection.

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Influence

Rollo May, a pioneer of existential psychotherapy in the United States, was deeply influenced by Rank’s post-Freudian lectures and writings and always considered Rank to be the most important precursor of existential therapy. Shortly before his death, Rollo May wrote the foreword to Robert Kramer's edited collection of Rank’s American lectures. “I have long considered Otto Rank to be the great unacknowledged genius in Freud’s circle,” said May (Rank, 1996, p. xi).

In 1936 Carl Rogers, the most influential psychologist in America after William James, invited Otto Rank to give a series of lectures in New York on Rank’s post-Freudian models of experiential and relational therapy. Rogers was transformed by these lectures and always credited Rank with having profoundly shaped "client-centered" therapy and the entire profession of counselling. "I became infected with Rankian ideas," said Rogers (Rank, 1996, p. 263).

The New York writer Paul Goodman, who was co-founder with Fritz Perls of the Gestalt method of psychotherapy, one of the most popular in the world today, described Rank’s post-Freudian ideas on art and creativity as “beyond praise” in Gestalt Therapy (Perls, Goodman and Hefferline, 1951, p. 395).

In 1974, the sociologist Ernest Becker won the Pulitzer prize for The Denial of Death (1973), which was based on Rank’s post-Freudian writings, especially Will Therapy (1929-31), Psychology and the Soul (1930) and Art and Artist (1932).

Today, Rank can be seen as one of the great pioneers in the fields of humanistic, existential, Gestalt and transpersonal psychology.

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Major publications

Major works written by Otto Rank, by date of first publication.

Year	German Title (Current Edition)	English Translation (Current Edition)
1907	Der Kunstler	The Artist
1909	Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden (Turia & Kant, 2000, ISBN 3851321413)	The Myth of the Birth of the Hero (Johns Hopkins, 2004, ISBN 0801878837)
1911	Die Lohengrin Sage [doctoral thesis]	The Lohengrin Saga
1912	Das Inzest-Motif	The Incest Theme in Literature and Legend (Johns Hopkins, 1991, ISBN 0801841763)
1913	Die Bedeutung der Psychoanalyse fur die Geisteswissenschaften [with Hanns Sachs]	The Significance of Psychoanalysis for the Mental Sciences
1914	chapters in Sigmund Freud's Die Traumdeutung	The Interpretation of Dreams
1924	Das Trauma der Geburt (Psychosozial-Verlag, 1998, ISBN 3932133250)	The Trauma of Birth, 1929 (Dover, 1994, ISBN 0-486-27974-X)
1924	Entwicklungsziele der Psychoanalyse [with Sandor Ferenczi]	The Development of Psychoanalysis / Developmental Goals of Psychoanalysis
1925	Der Doppelgänger [written 1914]	The Double (Karnac, 1989, ISBN 0946439583)
1929	Wahrheit und Wirklichkeit	Truth and Reality (Norton, 1978, ISBN 0393008991)
1930	?	Will Therapy, 1936 (Norton, 1978, ISBN 0393008983)
1930	Seelenglaube und Psychologie	Psychology and the Soul (Johns Hopkins, 2003, ISBN 0801872375)
1932	Kunst und Künstler (Psychosozial-Verlag, 2000, ISBN 3898060233)	Art and Artist (Norton, 1989, ISBN 0-393-30574-0)
1932		Modern Education
1941		Beyond Psychology (Dover, 1966, ISBN 0-486-20485-5)
1996		A Psychology of Difference: The American Lectures [talks given 1924–1938; edited and with an introductory essay by Robert Kramer] (Princeton, 1996, ISBN 0691044708)

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References

Major works about Otto Rank.

Karpf, Fay Berger (1970). The Psychology and Psychotherapy of Otto Rank: An Historical and Comparative Introduction. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0837130298.
Lieberman, E. James (1985). Acts of Will: The Life and Work of Otto Rank. Free Press. ISBN 0-68-486327-8.
Menaker, Esther (1982). Otto Rank: A Rediscovered Legacy. Columbia University Press.

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