OTTO RANK: Update, 2010
The Freud-Rank correspondence, about 250 letters, has been transcribed and translated, and installed in a database. Gregory Richter translated the original German; editorial work is being done by E. James Lieberman and Robert Kramer; grant support for translation costs has been received from the Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Rank Fund), The Ernest Becker Foundation, and the International Psychoanalytic Association. Publication anticipated in 2011, with separate English, German, and French editions.
Psychosozial-Verlag (Giessen, Germany) brought out Rank’s Kunst und Künstler (1932/2000) for the first time in the original German! Special thanks to Bertram Müller (Düsseldorf) for collating the manuscript, which is part of the Rank collection at Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Psychosozial also reprinted Rank’s Das Trauma der Geburt and the three-part Technik der Psychoanalyse: I. Die Analytische Situation; II. Die Analyttische Reaktion; III. Die Analyse des Analytikers (2006 [1926, 1929, 1931]) parts II and III translated as Will Therapy by Jessie Taft.
Otto Rank’s A Psychology of Difference: The American Lectures, edited by Robert Kramer, Ph.D., published by Princeton U. Press (1996) is the first book in Rank’s own English to be published since Beyond Psychology (1941, posthumous). A number of shorter pieces appeared in the Journal of the Otto Rank Association between 1966 and 1983.
Otto Rank: A Rediscovered Legacy by Esther Menaker, Columbia U. Press (1982) has a companion volume by her, Separation, Will, and Creativity: The Wisdom of Otto Rank (Aronson, 1996).
Truth & Reality and Art & Artist are available from Norton; Will Therapy is no longer in print. Beyond Psychology (Dover paperback) is out of print but available used, as is Trauma of Birth, introduction by EJL (1994 [1929]).
The Incest Theme in Literature & Legend [1912], first English translation (G. Richter; introduction by P. Rudnytsky) Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1991. The Development of Psychoanalysis (1924) by Ferenczi and Rank is available from International Universities Press (1986).
Rank’s Myth of the Birth of the Hero, 2nd ed. (1922) has been translated into English for the first time by Gregory Richter and E. James Lieberman, along with Rank’s essay on Hamlet, and an introduction by Robert Segal, noted theorist on myth: Johns Hopins University Press, 2004. This edition is twice the size of the first edition of 1909 (English tr., 1914) which stayed in print thanks to Philip Freund, editor, who published a Rank anthology (Vintage V70, 1959) with that title, including an introductory essay plus 8 chapters from four Rank titles including the scarce Modern Education (1932). The Vintage has gone out of print but is available used.
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Paperback edition of Acts of Will: the Life & Work of Otto Rank by E. J. Lieberman with new preface (University of Massachusetts Press, 1993) like the 1985 clothbound it is out of print. The original publisher, Free Press (1985), now Simon and Schuster, keeps a paperback in print along with a new electronic version, which should include the preface from 1993. French translation La volonté en acte: La vie et l’oeuvre d’Otto Rank, Paris: PUF, 1991. German translation Otto Rank: Leben und Werk, 1997, published by Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen.
Relevant Books
Creative Dissent: Psychoanalysis in Evolution, ed. by A. Roland, B. Ulanov, and C. Barbre (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003) contains several essays on Rank; it is dedicated to Esther Menaker and includes her afterword.
Romantic Science and the Experience of Self by Martin Halliwell (Ashgate, 1999) treats William James, Otto Rank, Ludwig Binswanger, Erik Erikson, and Oliver Sacks in Vol. II in “Studies in Eurpean Cultural Transition.” A major new contribution to Rank scholarship, it is reviewed in Bulletin of the History of Medicine 76:846-847, 2002 by E.J.L.
In the Shadow of Organization by Robert Denhardt (1981/pb 1989) refers extensively to Rank, especially Chapter 8, “Organization and Immortality.” The author is past president of the American Society for Public Administration.
Ellen Handler Spitz, in Image and Insight (1991), Ch. 12 “Conflict and Creativity: Reflections on Otto Rank’s Psychology of Art” gives a fine perspective. The book is highly praised by Robert Coles.
Paradoxes of Group Life by Kenwyn Smith and David N. Berg (1988) a book on group dynamics, authority, paradox, and change acknowledges Rank’s importance.
The Psychoanalytic Vocation: the Legacy of Otto Rank and Donald Winnicott by Peter Rudnytsky (Yale, 1991), mostly critical of Rank, has been remaindered.
Carl Rakosi: Man and Poet, Michael Heller, ed. (Orono: Univ. of Maine, National Poetry Foundation: 1993) includes dozens of references to Rank (and some to Jessie Taft and Virginia Robinson). Rakosi was both poet and social worker (as Callman Rawley). He died in 2004 at 101 (see Wikipedia).
Work, Death and Life Itself: Essays on Management and Organization, by Burkard Sievers (Berlin & NY: de Gruyter, 1993) addresses Rank and Ernest Becker extensively, e.g. in the chapter “Participation as a Quarrel about Immortality.”
Matthew Fox refers often to Rank in his books and lectures. In The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (Harper & Row, 1988) he sets Rank’s interest in creative will, the mother, and difference against Augustine’s fall/redemption theology. He also has several lectures on Rank at YouTube.
Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision by Louis Breger (Wiley, 2000) presents a fresh view of Freud with a fine chapter on Rank.
Projects: actual and potential
A selection of articles from the Journal of the Otto Rank Association and other sources would make an excellent anthology. Some issues of this publication (only some 800 of each issue were published, 1966-1983) can be found used at Amazon.com
Das Inzest-Motif, second ed. [1926] and (unpublished, shorter) third [1934] editions have not been translated. Modern Education (1932) should be reprinted in English and German. Will Therapy should be brought back into print, perhaps with some illustrative cases appended or integrated.