Once the favorite son of Sigmund Freud, Otto Rank eventually became one of his mentor's sharpest critics.
Rank was Freud's closest disciple and colleague
from 1906-1926, the formative years of the psychoanalytic
movement. Freud valued Rank's expertise in art, music, literature,
anthropology, history, science and philosophy and advised him not to go to medical school but to complete his academic education. Rank obliged. At 21 a locksmith and largely self-educated, Rank went back to school and on to the University of Vienna, where he got his Ph.D. at 28, in 1912. By then Rank had published books on art, mythology, incest, and Lohengrin. Rank, whose family was poor, earned his keep as Secretary of the
Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Second only to Freud as a psychoanalytic author, "little Rank (5'3)"--as Freud (5'7) affectionately called him in letters to Jung [6']--
grew to become a leader in
the psychological revolution that changed the way we see
ourselves.
Otto Rank broke away from psychoanalysis at age 40, about the time he first visited America. Returning from New York in 1924 as an honorary member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Rank faced criticism from the Freudians for his new ideas on the mother-child relationship and on less authoritarian psychotherapy. With Sandor Ferenczi, Rank developed a more active and egalitarian psychotherapy focused on the here-and-now, real relationship, conscious mind and will, rather than past history, transference, unconscious and wish.
Controversy over Rank's The Trauma of Birth (1924) led to the final break with Freud who first praised, then condemned the book under pressure from Rank's rivals, especially Karl Abraham and Ernest Jones. Rank's new theory of anxiety was meant to supplement, not overthrow, psychoanalysis. Freud revamped his own theory in response to Rank though he rejected Rank's emphasis on the mother (psychoanalysis then was father-centered) and the Oedipus complex. He put down Rank's interest in brief therapy as a sign of corruption by superficial American values. The hostility of the psychoanalytic movement to independent thinkers like Otto Rank is found in the cases of Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Sandor Ferenczi, and many more. In 1926, after backtracking for a year, Rank left Vienna for Paris with his wife, Beata, a lay psychoanalyst, and their only child, Helene, 7. There he met the diarist Anais Nin, who wrote about her therapy with Rank and their subsequent love affair. Otto Rank visited the U.S. several times before emigrating permanently in 1935. Ousted by orthodox Freudians, Rank lectured widely, taught at the University of Pennsylvania and practiced psychotherapy in New York. His Art and Artist; Modern Education; Will Therapy; and Truth and Reality were published by Knopf. In October 1939, divorced and remarried, planning to become a citizen and move to California, Rank died at age 55. He loved his new country and Mark Twain had become his favorite author, from whom he adopted the nickname "Huck."
Brought to the attention of a wider public by Ernest Becker, Paul Goodman, Rollo May, Esther Menaker, Anais Nin, Carl Rogers, Jessie Taft, and Irvin Yalom, Otto Rank is regaining an audience interested in psychotherapy, creativity and the arts, humanistic psychology, feminism, and philosophy. Many of his ideas have entered the mainstream although his role as an innovator in interpersonal and existential psychotherapy has yet to be recognized in full. Readers will find insights on will, soul, life-fear and death-fear, art and artist, myth, religion, education, and psychotherapy.
Hardback, 1998; paperback, 2003
The second--expanded, updated--edition, first translation in English, hardback 2004, with introductory essay by Robert A. Segal, Ph.D., and Rank's essay on Hamlet. Save 20%: Johns Hopkins U. Press Code: NAF
Listen to a 45 minute talk by psychologist Sheldon Solomon introducin Otto Rank and/or a 30 minute interview by David Charney with E. James Lieberman on Will Therapy.
Three Rankian Essays
Why Oedipus Really Loved His Father
More
Esperanto, Français, Italiano
For further information: email contact information at top of "Books" page; office phone (202) 362-3963.
Web Author: E. James Lieberman, M.D. (information at Member, Who's Who in Mental
Health on the Web)
August 2006