Books
As yet there is no complete published bibliography of Otto Rank. The Grinstein Index of Psychoanalytic Writings has his early works, including books and articles, but not the later ones. A chronological list of major works with information on editions and translations is found in Acts of Will: The Life and Work of Otto Rank by E. James Lieberman (1985/1993), 450-453. Not included there is a later compilation: A Psychology of Difference: The American Lectures by Otto Rank, Robert Kramer, ed. (1996), which provides a readable overview of Rank’s mature work. See also the bibliographic chart on this website following the biography.
Art and Artist and Truth and Reality are in print in paperback (Norton). Myth of the Birth of the Hero (2nd ed.), and Psychology and the Soul are in print (Johns Hopkins University Press) and Rank’s last book, in print for a long time (Dover), Beyond Psychology is not hard to find used.
Rank wrote a chapter in Will Therapy called “Life Fear and Death Fear.” That book has gone out of print; the chapter is reprinted in the paperback anthology The Myth of the Birth of the Hero–also out of print but easier to find. Here is a quote from the chapter, all of which is well worth reading.
“The neurotic then is a man whom extreme fear keeps from accepting this payment [death] as a basis of life, and who accordingly seeks in his own way to buy himself free from his guilt. He does this through a constant restriction of life (restraint through fear); that is, he refuses the loan (life) in order thus to escape the payment of the debt (death). …. [This] has not so much the intention of granting him life, as of escaping death, from which he seeks to buy himself free by daily partial self-destruction …. as long as he punishes himself, feels pain as it were, he still lives … [this shows neurosis to be] an individual attempt at healing, against the arch enemy of mankind, the death fear, which can no longer be cured by the collective method [e.g., religion] of earlier ages.”
~ ~ ~