Acts of Will: The Life and Work of Otto Rank
E. James Lieberman
Paperback ed. with new preface, Amherst: U. Massachusetts Press, 1993; You may
purchase this book
–[Clothbound, Free Press, 1985; reprinted in pb, without new introduction] French translation La volonte en acte: La vie et l’oeuvre d’Otto Rank, Paris: PUF, 1991. German translation Otto Rank: Leben und Werk Giessen: Psychosozial-Verlag, 1997.
“It fully matches in its brilliance, the work of its subject.” –Charles K. Edgley, Professor of Sociology, Oklahoma State U. and co-editor, Life as Theater: A Dramaturgical Sourcebook. (Personal communication, 2004).
Reviews
Library Journal March 1, 1985 (*=highly recommended)
…Dr. Lieberman manages to convey the complexity of the conflicts within Freud’s circle of followers, both personal and professional, as he skillfully integrates the major sources on Freud’s life and the early years of the psychoanalytic movement….the book affords an excellent introduction–for both scholars and informed lay readers–to the work of a brilliant psychoanalytic innovator whose seminal theories on birth trauma, separation anxiety, and time-limited therapy (to name just a few) are still central issues today. –Paul Hymowitz
New York Times, Sunday, March 24, 1985, Book Review Page 3, Column 1
…But the significant drama in Rank’s life is the interior one that springs from the workings of his mind, the strangeness of his intellectual development, the power and originality of his ideas. Fortunately, these are the areas in which Dr. Lieberman is at his best. He does an excellent job of setting forth clearly the evolution of Rank’s thought in relation to his life and his milieu. It is not an easy task. Rank’s ideas were so profound, so ineffable, so far ahead of his time that one has the impression he could never find the language in which to express them. In his writings, overwhelmingly brilliant and sometimes nearly unreadable, different realms of discourse swirl and collide – Schopenhauer’s and Nietzsche’s philosophies of the will, the psychoanalytic unconscious, the biology of sex, anthropology and sociology, metaphysics, art history and religion, all of it lurching toward transcendence. –Michael Vincent Miller
The complete text can be found on the New York Times website.
Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 1987
No major player in the drama–Freud, Ferenczi, Eitingon, Abraham, Jones, and even Rank himself–emerges unscathed by Lieberman’s masterful investigation and commentary….What emerges in this work is a fascinating portrait of a brilliant man, not without his own difficulties and idiosyncrasies who was nevertheless able to contribute to many as scholar, mentor, publisher, therapist, and friend. This important and enjoyable book should be savored by interested students in the history of psychoanalystic thought and therapy. –Kathryn J. Zerbe
The New Republic, May 20, 1985 (NR “Recommended Books”)
Dr. Lieberman must be congratulated on the thoroughness with which he brings Rank to life. Rank was a reticent man, and details of his private life have evidently been hard to discover; but Lieberman seems to have disinterred all that is currently to be known about him. In doing so, he has made a valuable addition to the early history of the psychoanalytic movement, which, like Bloomsbury, seems to be inexhaustable terrain for biographers…. This life contains much that is new, and certainly restores Rank to his rightful position as a major innovator among psychoanalysts. –Anthony Storr