Otto Rank

The Evolution of Psychotherapy Since Freud

by E. James Lieberman, M.D.

In 1906, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), neurologist and first psychoanalyst, hired a young
locksmith, Otto Rank (1884-1939), as secretary of the Wednesday Psychological Society–the
future Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Freud, then 50, became a second father to the brilliant,
self-taught, working-class youth of who was alienated from his own father, Simon Rosenfeld, an
artisan jeweler hot-tempered and given to alcoholic excess.

It was probably Alfred Adler, having read an essay by Rank on the psychology of the artist, who
recommended the youth to Freud. Adler, Rank’s family physician and a member of Freud’s inner
circle, recognized the value of Rank’s essay, which used the new psychoanalytic theory to create a
“sexual psychology of the artist.”

Much impressed, Freud hired Rank and sent him back to complete the Gymnasium so he could go
on to University. Thus began a 20-year professional and personal relationship between the two
men, closer than those between Freud and his sons or Rank and his father. With Freud’s help Rank
finished his education in six years, becoming the first “lay” or nonmedical analyst. When he
obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Vienna in 1912, Rank already occupied an important role
at Freud’s side as specialist in history, philosophy, art and mythology. Evidence of the esteem in
which he was held appears in editions 4 to7 of Die Traumdeutung, Freud’s masterwork, where
Rank’s name appears on the title page as contributor of two chapters in addition to his work as
editor and bibliographer.

The year 1913 stands out in the history of psychoanalysis. After the departures of Alfred Adler
and Carl Jung over theoretical differences, a Committee, “The Ring,” was founded to guide and
control the evolution of the new science. Besides Freud himself the members were: Ernest Jones
(1879-1958), British biographer of Freud and longtime president of the International
Psychoanalytic Association (IPA); Karl Abraham (1877-1925), head of the Berlin Institute for
psychoanalytic training; Sandor Ferenczi (1873-1933), the affable, creative intimate of Freud and
Rank, from Budapest; Otto Rank, the only one in Vienna with Freud; and, in Berlin, Max Eitingon
and lawyer Hanns Sachs (besides Rank the only nonphysician).

The World War blocked communication among the Committee, but the members began to meet
and correspond beginning in 1918. The northern axis of the group, London and Berlin, tended to
be conservative. Jones and Abraham interpreted psychoanalytic theory narrowly, at times
opposing Freud himself, who was flexible and able to change his views. Supporting certain
changes, Rank and Ferenczi, the southern axis, elaborated an “active therapy”: it made the analyst
less isolated–more a partner in exploration than a surgical authority, masked and removed.
Besides listening and interpreting, the therapist would guide, support and challenge the patient.
Thus began relationship or interpersonal therapy as we know it today.

Freud heartily endorsed the innovation, proposing a prize for the best paper on active therapy in
the next IPA Congress (1922). During the next two years disputes raged among the “brethren”
under Freud, as the northern and southern contingents strove for Freud’s approval and ultimately,
his mantle. Jones and Abraham saw a departure from the rigorous science begun by Freud, who in
1912 had written that the ideal analyst would conduct himself as a surgeon, with objective
expertise, emotional detachment and authority.

Even Freud did not conduct himself so. In both speaking and writing, he balanced scientific
authority with human warmth, charm, humility. These qualities evidently resonated more in
Ferenczi and Rank than in Jones and Abraham. Over the years observers have remarked that
Freud was less orthodox than his most fervent disciples–beginning, I suggest, with the latter two.

An amusing comment on this phenomenon comes from the pioneer analyst Abraham Kardiner,
who was in Vienna with mainly American and British analysts-in-training in the early 1920s. He
reported that there was tension between the two groups, the former mostly Jewish, the latter not
(Ernest Jones was the only non-Jew on the Committee). One day the British invited the
Americans to tea to discuss the different experiences of the two nationalities in working with
Freud. The British analysands were perplexed in finding Freud almost totally silent. They had
heard that he talked quite freely with at least some of the Americans. Was it true?

Yes. Often Freud would discuss books, theoretical points, even art and politics in the analytic
hours.

Apparently the British, not to feel chagrined, concluded that Freud conducted a more serious
analysis with them than with their casual, rather motley American counterparts. Kardiner, an
immigrant from Europe, heard complaints over the years about long, silent, ineffectual analyses by
members of the British school, where “the analyst says nothing except ‘good morning’ and ‘good
day.

He added, significantly, that Freud had not conversed with one New Yorker in the Vienna group
who was held in lower esteem. Evidently Freud, despite his remark about the surgical attitude, did
not hide behind the blank screen of analytic expressionlessness. Those who pleased Freud made
him more active. The phenomenon of forthcoming responsiveness is now being taken more
seriously by the analytic profession, e.g., in discussions of mirroring, and in renewed interest in
the Ferenczi-Rank monograph of 1924, The Development of Psychoanalysis.

The Committee was shaken badly when, at age 67, Freud was afflicted with cancer of the palate.
The next year, 1924, fraternal rivalry intensified for heir-apparent. Freud never attended another
IPA Congress because of embarrassment or discomfort in speaking and eating due to a prosthesis.
But he lived another 16 years, to age 83, enduring repeated operations. He continued to analyze
and write, even radically changing his theory about anxiety (Inhibition, Symptom and Anxiety
1926), partly in rebuttal to Rank’s Trauma of Birth (1924).

The leadership of the IPA was not elected by the membership, but chosen by the Committee from
within. Freud never took the presidency, but approved the decision. Jones, on account of his
power in the expanding English-speaking movement, presided for many years; Ferenczi, because
of problems in Hungary, stepped down after brief tenure; Abraham died in 1925, and Rank never
served, breaking with the movement in 1926. Freud, always afraid that psychoanalysis would be
identified as a Jewish science, acceded to Jones although he did not trust the man. Jones and
Rank despised each other cordially, and Jones merely gave lip-service to Freud’s support of lay
analysis. Sachs, Reik, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, Beata Rank and others–but especially Otto
Rank–proved that medical training was not needed to be a good practitioner, theorist or teacher
of psychoanalysis.

Ferenczi also fought in the losing battle to keep the IPA open to nonmedical professionals. The
active, interpersonal, time-limited therapy which he initially championed with Rank came in
response to the Freudian furor after World War I. Physicians and others were lining up to be
trained in the new profession, patients were lining up to be treated, writers and critics were taking
a new approach to literature, sex was discussed in a new way, and no field was immune to
psychoanalytic interpretation. Freud’s Introductory Lectures (1917) had been translated into at
least seven languages.

According to Ferenczi and Rank, the practice of psychoanalysis had stagnated due to overly strict
devotion to theory, and clinical results were too often unsatisfactory. Freud wanted to work out a
general psychology more than a method of treatment and he did not presume much about the
therapeutic effect of his discoveries. A pessimist, he said that successful psychoanalysis could only
transform neurotic misery into ordinary unhappiness. Nevertheless the idea of real help became
popular; Ferenczi and Rank firmly held this view and tried to understand and teach its basis.

They criticized the practice of the time for its 1) emphasis on the past; 2) need to uncover–in
order to interpret–a basic oedipal complex in every analysand; 3) excessive use of the concept
“transference, which concerns the appearance in the analytic situation of a constellation of
emotions in the patient toward the therapist, representing unconscious emotions attached to
important (parental) figures from the past. Theoretically the process of analysis postulates an
inevitable transference neurosis which can be analyzed through profound knowledge of the
history, fantasies, dreams and free associations of the patient. But according to the new critique,
too many practitioners strove to follow an exact–but nonexistent–Freudian formula. Like Freud,
they valued research above helping; at times they imposed inappropriate interpretations about a
hidden oedipal complex, and analyzed any resistance until the patient yielded to the truth.

Dr. Clara Thompson, an American psychiatrist whose own analyst was Ferenczi and who
analyzed Harry Stack Sullivan, once wrote vividly about the new attitude. She disliked the
tendency to analyze everything in relation to parents and the past because, as Rank taught, this
diverts attention from the actual relationship.

Rank was the first to point out that in doing this the patient was led away from the living present,
at the area of real feeling. As he put it, it is always easier to talk about the past because it is not
present. He and Ferenczi stressed, for the first time, that not every attitude toward the analyst is
transferred from the past, that there is some reaction to the analyst in his own right, and that it is
actually anxiety-relieving and, therefore, stops the progress of analysis, to point out to the patient,
You do not really feel this way about me but about your father, etc. Thus, if the patient finally
gets the courage to tell the analyst he looks like a pig, the whole issue may be conveniently buried
by referring it to the past, saying, That must be what you thought of your father. Two things
may happen as a result–the analyst does not have to face the fact that he does look like a pig and
the patient feels “I got safely out of that one,” but he does not feel more secure thereby because
he knows he really meant the analyst and not his father. From that day on he is likely to assume
that the analysts’ feelings have to be protected. Realizing this, Rank and Ferenczi discovered the
importance of the picture of the analyst in his own right–thus transference became more precisely
defined as only the irrational attitudes felt and expressed toward the analyst.

Soon Jones and Abraham attacked Ferenczi and Rank. Besides that book, Rank added fuel to the
fire with his birth trauma theory, which established the nurturing (pre-oedipal) mother-child
relationship as primary in psychological development. At first enthusiastic, Freud gradually
aligned himself with the northern axis against the innovators.

In 1924, at age 40, Rank sailed to New York for the summer to analyze and teach. Received
warmly as Freud’s emissary and then in his own right, his accolades included honorary
membership in the American Psychoanalytic Association. Increasingly bitter about the attacks and
Freud’s withdrawal of support, Rank finally emigrated to Paris in 1926, visiting the United States
almost every year until his permanent move there in 1934. He died a month after Freud in 1939, at
55.

Among those who knew Rank and acknowledge his influence are Frederick Allen, pioneer child
psychiatrist; Carl Rogers and Jessie Taft, psychologists; and Virginia Robinson, social worker–the
last two associated with the Pennsylvania School of Social Work. Many others hid their
indebtedness to Rank, since acknowledging him could only hurt them when Freudian
psychoanalysis dominated American psychiatry, psychology and social work. In the 20s Rank
was one of the most sought after analysts. After 1930, his former analysands were required to
undergo reanalysis with a certified Freudian to qualify for IPA membership.

Ferenczi died in 1933, having broken first with Rank and then, in the end, with Freud and the
movement. Jones, who completed his massive Freud biography just before his death in 1958,
attributed the defections of Rank and Ferenczi to mental illness. This calumny continues to crop
up in histories of psychoanalysis, but gradually the writings of these creative pioneers are coming
back into the mainstream with the help of interpreters like Leo Stone, John Gedo and Esther
Menaker.

Sigmund Freud attempted to secure a scientific basis for knowledge of the psyche belonging
previously to poets and philosophers. Regardless of the validity of his theory, he invented a new
form of human interaction, the analytic situation. His followers used and modified this invention
to its present status, chiefly in psychotherapy, 100 years after the beginning.

With a schematic representation of contrasting emphases, we can look at differences in viewpoint,
ideology and practice which characterize the Freudian and divergent–Rankian–psychodynamic
systems which now include the interpersonal, existential, client-centered, time-limited and
humanistic.

1. Freudian/classical: Science–objective, general

Rankian/modern: Art–subjective, unique

Freud admired artists but considered himself a scientist who worked to validate objectively the
intuitions of poets and philosophers. He tried to avoid the appearance of speculative thinking,
even denying the influence of Nietzsche. Otto Rank willingly embraced philosophical and artistic
sources, and once offered this paradoxical principle: For each patient I need a different theory.”

2. F: Analysis, exploration

R: Therapy, helping

Freud borrowed the word analysis (Greek: “separation”) from the vocabulary of chemistry.
Therapy, on the other hand, derives from the Greek and Latin with meanings of serving, care and
healing. Otto Rank, after leaving Freud, used the word “psychotherapy” to describe his work,
even alluding to himself as a philosopher of helping. Other pioneers who found a similar path from
analysis to helping include Franz Alexander, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Frieda
Fromm-Reichmann, Harry Stack Sullivan, Sandor Rado, Michael Balint, Erik Erikson and John
Bowlby.

3. F: The past, memories, childhood

R: The present, here-and-now

Clara Thompson’s statement illustrates this point.

4. F: The unconscious, repression, suppression by the ego

R: The conscious, expression of the ego

If Freud devoted the analytic hour to free that of which one is not aware, Rank used the occasion
to confront that which the patient knows but fails to express in words or action.

5. F: Wish, instinct

R: Will, creativity

In psychoanalysis, conscious will has virtually no place; Freud dismissed the will as found in
19th-century psychology. Rank put it back as a central factor, the essence of human identity. Will
expresses both ego and instinctual energy. His approach was called “will therapy. This signifies
not willfulness but the ability to combine strong goal-directedness with self-discipline and free,
spontaneous improvisation.

6. F: Understanding, intellect

R: Experience, emotion

Rank believed that the neurotic suffers precisely because of too much self-analysis, while lacking
the courage, on account of guilt and life-fear, to engage in appropriate experience and action. If
for Freud (as with Socrates) the unexamined life is not worth living, then with Rank we can say
that the uncreative life is not worth living, and the unlived life is not worth examining.

7. F: Transference, interpretation

R: Actual relationship, intimacy

Rankian actuality and existentialism de-emphasizes childhood projection, the kernel of the
transference neurosis. Instead, Rank postulates real relationship as the core of therapy, one which
(somewhat paradoxically) has a professional kind of intimacy and openness, in contrast with
Freud’s method in which the analyst keeps removed and unknown.

8. F: Biology

R: Psychology

Freud used the Oedipus myth as a deterministic model of human family dynamics. He argued that
every boy unconsciously wishes to kill his father and marry his mother. But Oedipus, an adoptee,
loved his psychological parents; of course, he did not know his biological ones because they
abandoned him as an infant. Oedipus pursued literal truth over the edge, into tragedy. Knowing
who he is” biologically, historically, overcame prudent warnings and Jocasta’s petition that he
abandon the quest and pursue life. Emotional truth is often not congruent with the factual kind;
having relations can mean being related biologically or being intimate. With Jocasta, Rank
favored psychological over biological relationship, and he gave philosophical primacy to
self-creation over predetermination.

9. F: Death fear

R: Life fear

According to Freud, the patricidal son controls himself for fear of paternal punishment,
castration-fear, which symbolizes death. In contrast, Rank sees the problem as one of
individuation after involuntary birth. Can we, starting as unwilling newborn creatures, attain a
stage in which we embrace our lives, affirming creative will and human responsibility without
paralyzing guilt and fear? If so, this signifies a psychological rebirth, the transformation of
creature to creator.

10. F: Normality

R: Individuality

According to Rank, the challenge to us in the post-Freudian world is to create an individual
personality. In this respect, one who positively engages his/her own will becomes a successful
artist, not by painting or composing, but by living according to one’s own genius, spirit and
limitations. Life is a loan, death the repayment. The creative type invests or spends it; the
neurotic, also strong-willed but paralyzed by fear, is a failed artist who (neurotically) tries to deny
death: “It can’t be all over, I haven’t begun to live yet…”

This schematization oversimplifies categories, but may be useful
in viewing the forest. It should be clear that Rank, if not the
originating source of everything attributed to him, is a major
forerunner–largely unacknowledged–of what is now accepted
psychotherapeutic theory and
practice.

Auf Deutsch:	“Trennung und Selbsterschaffung: Leben und Werk von Otto Rank”, Psychoanalyse im Widerspruch, 5:56-64, December 1994.
En Esperanto	“La Evoluo de Psikoterapio depost Sigmund Freud” Return to Otto Rank Website Table of Contents

The Sexual Century

E. James Lieberman

The sexual century began, in a sense, with Sigmund Freud’s theories in Vienna. It ended, after a fashion, with U.S. President Bill Clinton overextending a form of sexual freedom in the oval office of the White House. In the intervening 98 years the automobile, co-ed schools, modern contraception, lifting of censorship, media orgies and the internet brought sex everywhere. A 1950s high school definition of slow dancing was “navel engagement without loss of semen.” The President and the intern spawned a thousand jokes about more sordid things. May we profit from their bad example.

The technical term for what caused this mess is fellatio interruptus. Fellatio has been practiced through the ages (sometimes banned, even criminalized, as oral sodomy). But long before dry cleaners and DNA tests were even thought of, spilled seed has had terrible conseqences. Take Onan (Genesis 38:9). According to religious law he had to step into his dead brother’s sandals, and inseminate the widow, Tamar. But Onan refused his brother’s proxy and “spilled his seed upon the ground.” Onan’s punishment was capital: God was watching and there was real accountability.

What Tamar did after that makes Linda Tripp seem tame. The moral of the story still holds after thousands of years: it’s about truthfulness and trust-keeping, a woman’s anger at lying, lustful men. Our President may know the Good Book but probably forgot about Tamar. (No doubt he remembers “A Woman Waits for Me” by Walt Whitman. Monica got Leaves of Grass for a present, not a Bible.)

The word “onanism” survives still. Its meaning covers more than coitus interruptus: masturbation, in fact, is its chief meaning. This is a stretch, considering that ordinary everyday masturbation was not Onan’s crime. But masturbation was seen as sinful by the church and harmful by medical authorities for centuries. Even Freud thought masturbation was unhealthy and until recently it was still called self-abuse or self-pollution. Authorities–medical and religious–blamed everything from sterility to insanity, acne to bad grades, on onanism. Because some mental patients masturbate openly, it was all too easy to attribute their status to that practice, instead of the reverse.

Onan’s crime was not about sex. It was about primogeniture. As with Adam and Eve, whose original sin was willful disobedience in relation to knowledge, not sex, Onan’s misadventure was abused by the guardians of public morality to taint what–at last–medical authorities accept as normal. Ironically Bill Clinton was embarrassed by his Surgeon General, Dr. Joycelyn Elders, who dared to say that masturbation might be discussed in sex education. He shooed her out. Bill Clinton began his reign with a strong stand for gay rights, but then no one would charge him with being in that minority group. Masturbation is for, by, and of the majority of people, but it’s not to be talked about.

Since the 1960s and Masters and Johnson, self-pleasuring is accepted as natural and healthy for children and adults, and one physician aptly dubbed it “the thinking person’s television.” Now TV is the place, along with the grand jury and press, where sexual misdemeanors are tried by court jesters. As Jay Leno says, we don’t need Bill to explain his relationship with Monica, we need him to explain his relationship with Hillary.

Masturbation often masquerades as regular sex, not to say love. Back in 1933, Havelock Ellis, British sexologist, observed that some male homosexuals who were treated for that condition with hypnosis could perform successfully with women, but that they felt it was really masturbation per vaginam. (The religious right wants to go down this road again.) Casual sex is still seen as more normal, and politically correct, than self-pleasuring, but fellatio is a form of self-pleasuring by proxy.

There’s a parallel in the story of Anais Nin, diarist, novelist, and tell-all seducer of married men. Lying was second nature to both Anais and Monica. Nin mixed fact and fiction in her Diary and didn’t need a Linda Tripp. In 1934, sailing from France (and her husband) to New York and psychologist Otto Rank, she had a naval/navel engagement and got a semen stain on her dress. That dress had been given to her by Rank, her paramour. Lest he see and question the damned spot, Nin cut it out with scissors, and told Rank the dress had been ruined by a spilled drink.

Otto Rank was a serious thinker before and after his fling with Anais. He was the guiding light for Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, which won the Pulitzer prize. Bill Clinton took that tome on his honeymoon. We don’t know whether he inhaled.

Otto Rank, Freud’s favorite student and assistant for two decades, finally broke from his famous mentor, became Americanized, revelled in Mark Twain and admired the writing of Roosevelt aide Thurman Arnold. Given a real break, Otto Rank might have become the president’s analyst. But he died in 1939, at age 55.

The FBI has a file on Otto Rank. I requested it in 1994 under the Freedom of Information Act and was told they have 200 agents working on such requests but it could take over two years. I got it after four years. Much of it is blacked out. There’s a little about a relative (by marriage) who fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil war. We know the FBI has more important things to deal with than dead psychologists and even current stains on fabric. But even filing and retrieval of documents seems a challenge. Monica has had her say–but has she really? Anais Nin has had hers, too–posthumously: the unexpurgated diaries are out. Bill Clinton and Otto Rank have not been heard from on the details. And we know practically nothing about the sex life of Sigmund Freud. So goes–or went?–the sexual century.

E. James Lieberman, M.D., a Washington psychiatrist, is author of Acts of Will: The Life and Work of Otto Rank and co-author of Like It Is: A Teen Sex Guide.

Washington DC 20015 202-362-3963 Return to Otto Rank Website Table of Contents Last Updated March, 2001

ESTHER MENAKER

A tribute to one of the preeminent interpreters of Otto Rank, from the Self Psychology web page (see below), slightly edited.
ABOUT ESTHER MENAKER
Born in Bern, Switzerland on September 6th, 1907, she came to the United States when she was three. Esther majored in chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and completed her master’s degree in its social work school, [where Jessie Taft, Rank's friend and translator, was teaching].
In 1930 Esther married William Menaker. The newlyweds pursued pyschoanalytic training in Vienna where Esther began a two-year analysis with Anna Freud and William was treated by Helene Deutsch. Both also obtained their doctorates in psychology at the University of Vienna .(Much of their experience in Vienna is recounted in Appointment in Vienna, 1989 reprinted as Misplaced Loyalties in 1995.)
After settling in New York City in 1934, the Menakers, who had two sons, Michael and Thomas, gradually became major influences on nonmedical psychoanalytic education. As Adjunct Professors in NYU’s Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program and helped found the Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis where Esther continues to teach and supervise. She was an early member of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis.
Writing prolifically in the years that followed, Esther developed her innovative theory of masochism as an adaptive process of the ego. As a student of ethology, Esther coauthored Ego in Evolution (1965)with her husband, who died in 1972. A series of papers in which she concentrated on ego identifications as the transmitter of social evolution together with others on masochism and creativity were published in Masochism and the Emergent Ego (1979).
In recent years, Esther has hailed the work of Otto Rank in Otto Rank: A Rediscovered Legacy (1982), and Separation, Will,and Creativity (1996). She has also embraced self psychological theory. Inspired by Kohut, Esther’s recent work Freedom to Inquire (1996) emphasizes the empathic stance and the importance of the selfobject.
Esther Menaker died in 2003, at the age of 96. We celebrate her place in the history of psychoanalytic thought and her generous gifts as a scholar, clinician, teacher, and friend.
Self Psychology Page
Return to Otto Rank Website Table of Contents
Updated March, 2004 by E. James Lieberman

Ueber Das Trauma der Geburt

Einfuehrung von E. James Lieberman von Otto Ranks The Trauma of Birth,Introduction, Dover, 1994 [1924/1929 Deutsch/English].

Eines der bedeutendsten Buecher in der Geschichte der Psychologie,Das Trauma der Geburt war der Anfang des Endes der Beziehungzwischen Sigmund Freud und seinem ihm naechsten Kollegen, OttoRank. Rank widmete das Werk seinem Meister “dem Erforscher des Unbewussten/Schoepfer der Psychoanalyse”. Freud, dankbar, lobte esals den grossten Fortschritt seit der Entdeckung derPsychoanalyse. Aber er hatte nur den ersten Teil gelesen.

Das Trauma der Geburt wurde 1924 veroeffentlicht, das Jahr indem Otto Rank 40 Jahre alt wurde und zum ersten Mal nach Amerika kam. So brachte Rank seine neuen Ideen nach Amerika in englischzur gleichen Zeit als das Buch in Deutsch erschien. In New York wurde Rank als Freuds Gesandter begruesst, ein genialer Mann der–im Gegensatz zu Alfred Adler und Carl Jung–seine eigenen Ideenausdruecken konnte, und doch seinem Mentor Freud treu blieb.

Rank wurde ein Ehren-Mitglied der AmerikanischenPsychoanalytischen Vereinigung (APA); Kollegen und Laien kamen zuihm in Kurztherapie. Natuerlich gab es einige, wie dereinflussreiche Psychiater und Psychoanalytiker A. A. Brill, dieeifersuechtig oder misstrauisch waren. Als er und Ranks Rivalen in Europa Freuds Angst ueber Ranks Abweichungen von dem engen Pfadder psychoanalytischen Ortodoxie erweckt hatten, zog Freud seineUnterstutzung der neuen Ideen zurueck.

Rank, 28 Jahre juenger als Freud, war zu seinen Mentor imJahr 1905 gekommen, gerade zur rechten Zeit als Sekretaer derWiener Psychoanalytischen Vereinigung (WPV) zu helfen, diepsychoanalytische Bewegung zu beginnen. Ein bescheidenes Stipendium Freuds machte es ihm moeglich sein Diplom (Doktor derPhilosophie: Ph.D.) an der Universitaet Wien 1912 zu bekommen. Zu der Zeit war Alfred Adler aus der Bewegung ausgeschlossen wordenund Carl Jung war im Begriff auszutreten. Ranks Kariere verlief ganz anders: zweifellos Freuds vorzugter Kollege, wurde er dieHauptstuetze in Freuds innerem Kreis–dem Komitee oder “Ring.”

Dann kam dieses Trauma Buch, bald nach Engwicklungsziele derPsychoanalyse (1923), mit Ranks liebstem Freund Sandor Ferenczigeschrieben hatte. Beide beschreiben eine aktive Art der Therapie und beide hatten Freuds Imprimatur bis die neuen Ideenumstritten waren. Beide Buecher verursachten eine Spaltung imKomitee die Freud nicht heilen konnte. Unter Druck von Ranks Rivalen forderte Freud seinen protege‚ in Briefen nach New Yorkheraus. Rank, bestoerzt und wuetend, machte einen heftigenGegenangriff aber dann bei seiner Rueckkehr nach Wien, versoehnteer sich mit Freud und dem “Ring” feilich nur lange genug, umseine Umzug nach Paris vorzubereiten.

Von dort, von 1926 an, besuchte Rank Amerika beinahe jedesJahr bis er sich schliesslich 1934 dort niederliess. Fuenf Jahre spaeter, 55 Jahre alt, starb er, einen Monat nachdem Freud inLondon gestorben war.

Das Trauma der Geburt wurde gelobt, kritisiert,missverstanden und, schliesslich, nach Ranks Bruch mit derorthodoxen Analyse ignoriert. Voll von Ideen, die ihrer Zeitvoraus waren, provozierte das Buch einen Versuch der Widerlegung durch Freud in Symptom Hemmung und Angst (1926), eine Schrift,die wesentliche Revision von Freuds Theorie ueber Angsteinschloss.

Ungluecklicherweise haben anderen Autoren Teile von RanksThesen vereinfacht oder entstellt. Ein vor kurzem erschienener Neudruck der originalen deutschen Version [1988] enthaelt einemoderne Einfuehrung, die den Text fast ignoriert, aber mitBegeisterung Rank zu den Verfachter der natuerlichen Geburtrechnet (F. Leboyer), ausserdem Ur-Schrei Therapie (A. Janov), denBewusstseins-veraendernde Drogen (S. Grof) und praenataler Erfahrungzuordnet.

Falsche Interpretationen der Geburtstrauma Theorie fingenbald nach ihrem Erscheinen an. In 1928 sagte die respektierteAerztin und Psychoterapeuterin Marion Kenworthy, in dem sie RanksTheorie auf Geburtshilfe anwendete, ein Kind das mitKaiserschnitt geboren ist werde “die Veranlagung haben, wenigersensitiv zu sein–er weint weniger, ist viel weniger irritiertwaehrend der ueblichen Kontakte, usw.–als das Kind das durch denGeburtskanal entbunden wird.” Sie warnte vor dem “tiefem nervoesem und emotionellen Schock, eine Begleiterscheinung derschweren Geburtserfahrung,” sie betonte, wie wichtig es sei, dassFrauenaertzte schwangere Frauen zu strenger Diaet anhalten, umkleiner Babys zu produzieren und somit mit weniger Trauma durchden Geburtskanal entbunden werden. Kuerzlich behauptete ein Autorentroestet (aber faelschlich), “Rankianer schlugen vor, dass alleKinder mit Kaiserschnitt geboren werden sollten, umGeburtstraumen zu vermeiden.”

Rank ist zum Teil fuer diese Verwirrung verantwortlich, weiler damals nach von mehr oder weniger schweren Geburtstraumensprach. Er war zu stark daran interessiert, ein wichtigesbiologisches Argument zu machen, vielleicht weil er nicht denmedicinischen Doktortitel hatte, der seine Autoritaet gestaerkthaette. Aber sein grundlegender Punkt ist psychologisch: dasHeraustreiben aus dem gesegneten praenatale Zustand–die Trennungvon der Mutter–ist unvermeidlicherweise traumatisch. Ein Kaiserschnitt kann das nicht verhindern. Ausserdem betrachtet er der Geburtstrauma als Prototyp fuer alle Angstkrisen: Entwoehnen,Gehen, Oedipus-Konflict, wesentliches zu wollen und zu waehlen,d.h., schoepferisch zu leben und, schliesslich, zu sterben.

Das Trauma der Geburt bringt eine Anzahl von Ideen, diegrundlegend sind fuer Ranks spaetere Arbeit in Theorie undTherapie: die Bedeutung der prae-oedipale Phase der Entwicklung;die Wichtigkeit der Mutter; Befristung der Therapie (ob kurz oderlang; die Konzept der Trennung; und das des Willens; undSelbstschoepfung oder psychologische Wiedergeburt. Das Buch glaenzt mit Juwelen der Erkenntnis, gegruendet auf solidehistorische, philosophische, antropologische, kuenstlerische undliterarische Forschung. Leser, die verwirrt und ueberwaeltig sindvon manchen diese theoretischen Akrobatiken, sollten sich mit derTatsache troesten, dass Freud aehnliche Gefuehle hatte.

Rank nennt Freud in dem Buch als Urheber fuer verschiedene dieser Ideen, vor allem, dass Geburt die Ur-Angst sei, und dassBestimmung eines Endtermines fuer die Analyse nuetzlich sein koenne.Rank schrieb dieses Buch, um Freuds Ideen weiter zu entwickeln,nicht um ihm zu trotzen. Ranks Hoffnung und Beduerfnis nachFreuds Beifall hinderte ihn allerdings daran, die Schwierigkeitenvorauszusehen die entstanden, als er schneller und weiter vorausschritt als Freud es wollte. Vielleicht ist diese Glaube an den Mentor wesentlich fuer den Schueler, um das grosseschoepferische Risiko zu wagen. Die Alternative–nicht darum besorgt zu sein–ist undenkbar im Fall diese zweiaussergewoehnlichen Menschen.

Heutzutage vergessen wir, in wie starkem Masse FreudsPsychologie sich auf dem Vater konzentrierte, ehe das Das Traumader Geburt erschien. Rank war sich dieser vorherrschenden Ideologie in Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft voellig bewusst: “Es istbesonders in letzter Zeit wiederholt bemerkt worden, dass unseregesamte Mentalitaet und Welteinstellung den maennlichen Standpunktso sehr in den Vordergrund rueckte und den weiblichen fastgaenzlich vernachlaessigt hat.” (S. 54) Das unterscheidet Rank,als ersten “Feministen” in Freuds innerem Kreis von den anderen. Heutzutage ist es selbstverstaendlich fuer uns, dass die Mutter-Kind Beziehung ausschlaggebend ist in der fruehesten Entwichlungs-phase; aber damals praesentierte die psychoanalytische Theorieeinen starken, mit Kastration drohenden Vater und eine Mutter,deren Wert mehr erotisch als naehrend war.

Dem Geburtstrauma folgen nach Rank zwei weitere normaleEntwicklungs-Trennungen: Entwoehnen und gehen. Erst spaeter wirddas Oedipus-Drama zentral–und dadurch in seiner Bedeutung etwasgemildert. Die Debatte ueber Ranks Theorie war gerade ueber diesenPunkt heftig, weil der Oedipus-Komplex synonym geworden war mitFreuds Theorie und Praxis und der therapeutische Prozess umdiesen Komplex zentriert war. Fuer Rank dagegen rief die Trennungvon dem Analytiker am Ende der Behandlung das Geburtstraumawieder hervor. Analytiker und Patienten bestaetigen RanksBeobachtung, dass das Ende der Behandlung Traeume und starkeGefuehle hervorrief, die voll von Geburtssymbolen waren. Und Rank verwies auf Sokrates’ Bild der Hebamme fuer die Hilfe bei der Geburt des Selbst durch Erkenntnis (S. 186-7): das perfekteBeispiel, in dem die Erfahrung der Kenntnis hilft. Rank meinte,dass die Analyse oft zu intellektuell ritualisiert sei und damittherapeutische Žnderung, die ebenso auf Erfahrung wie aufSelbsterkenntnis beruht, eher behindere als erleichtere.

Wie das Inhaltsverzeichnis erzaehlt, beschaeftigtsich diesesBuch mit Kunst, Anthropologie, Religion, Philosophie, undPsychologie verankert in der Biologie; Rank waehlte “verankert”,um die biologische Verwurzlung der Angst zu beschreiben, die derKern seiner These ist (ohne die Angst auf die Biologie zureduzieren).

“Der Trieb is tatsaechlich nichts anderes als die

naechste Reaktion auf die psychisch verankerte Urangst,

sozusagen der durch diese modifizierte Instinkt, indem

das Ich in seinem Rueckdrang von der Angstgrenze immer

wieder aufs neue vorwaerts getrieben wird, das Paradies

statt in der Vergangenheit in der nach dem Ebenbild der

Mutter gestalteten Welt zu suchen und, soweit dies

misslingt, in den grossartigen Wunschkompensationen der

Religion, Kunst und Philosophie.” (195-6).

Zusammenfassend: Wir sind gewaltsam aus dem seligen Uterusherausgestossen, auf dem Weg bedroht mit Asphyxia. Es ist die Aufgabe unseres Lebens, diese Seligkeit wiederzufinden, indem wirdie Welt-als-Mutter fuer uns schaffen–oder umgekehrt. Wir unterdrueken das Geburtstrauma und die praenatale Erinnerung derSeligkeit, aber erleben die Repraesentation von beiden in jeder Form des Lebens und Sterbens. Wir sind im Leben zum grossen Teildurch–im woertlichen Sinne–atemberaubende Angst verankert, dieauf der einen Seite die Rueckkehr zum Zustand foetaler Bewusstlosigkeit und auf der anderen Seite den Selbstmordverhindert. Das Leben ist schwer, die Perioden davor und danachungleich besser (siehe Nietzsches Epigraph), aber wir sindgefangen in unserem menschlichen Zustand, halb Tier, halb Gott.

Wir sind gefangen, und die Angst hindert uns daran, dasGefaengnis einfach zu verlassen. Nach diesen Feststellungen nimmtRank uns in grossen Spruengen mit von Žra zu Žra, Kultur zu Kultur,Wiege zu Sarg, Eden zu Golgotha. Er ist als ein virtuoser Interpret “der gesamten Menschheitsentwicklung, ja sogarMenschwerdung selbst zu verwenden…” (S. 19)

Rank zitiert viele Autoren, darunter manche, die Freud nichtgern anerkennen wuerde, wie Stekel, Jung, Adler und Tausk. Rank hat an Jung und Adler etwas auszusetzen und lobt immer Freud,doch mit dem Lob kommt auch die kuehne Analyse. Genau wie Freud erkennt Rank Josef Breuer als Entdecker der Psychoanalyse an (S.190); Rank lobt Freuds Fleiss auf dem schwierigen Weg und tadeltedie, die sich von ihm trennten, kritisiert aber dann jeneFreudianer, die “treu gebliebenen Anhaenger, welche die Lehren desMeisters oft allzu woertlich in ihrer Weise interpretierten…”

(S. 191): das muss seine konservativen Rivalen innerhalb desKomitees sehr geaergert haben und zeigt, dass er volles Vertrauenin die Gunst seiner Mentors hatte. Dann spricht Rank von derTrennung Freuds von Breuer, der “Losloesung des Schuelers vonseinem Lehrer” (S. 192), eine glaenzende Analyse, unbeabsichtigtprophetisch fuer das, was sich in seinem eigenen Leben ereignenwird. Freuds Bruch mit Breuer kam als der juengere Mann (Freud)40 jahre alt war!

War es moeglich, dass Rank die Parallele in der jetzigenSituation nicht sah? Genau so wie ein virtuoser Musiker in einer sonst glaenzenden Vorfuehrung einige Noten unterschlagen kann, gehtRank manchmal zu weit oder nicht weit genug und uebersieht etwas,das fuer andere klar erkennbar ist. Rank hat Freuds Zerwuerfnisse mit Adler, Stekel, Jung und Tausk miterlebt und er wusste ja vonBreuer und Fliess. Aber Rank wusste auch, dass er einzigartig warin Freuds wechselvoller Geschichte von kollegialen Beziehungen;er erwartete, dass er seine Fluegel ausbreiten und dennoch in dasNest zurueckkehren koennte. Er hatte Unrecht und beide Maenner litten sehr unter diesem Bruch.

Wahrscheinlich haette Rank unter Freuds Obhut bleiben koennen,wenn er nachgegeben haette–aber er wollte oder konnte das nicht.šber Das Trauma der Geburt sagte Rank, dass ein Teil der Kritikberechtigt war, aber er verteidigte seine allgemeinen Positionenund widerlegte heftig Freuds Argumente.

Freud glaubte, dass am Ende der Therapie der Analysierte demAnalytiker ein Baby praesentiert. Dieses Buch, einGeburtstagseschenk fuer Freud, war Ranks Baby. Freud gefiel esnicht besser als Laios Iokastes Baby gefiel. Ich sehe hier eine ironisch oedipale Metapher: Das Baby konnte nicht in Freuds Hauswohnen; Rank wollte es nicht toeten so musste er fortgehen.

Toetete das Baby, wie Oedipus, den Vater? Keineswegs: DieFreud’sche Analyse bluehte, vor allem in Amerika, Ranks adoptierteHeimat. Das Buch wurde erst 1929 ins Englishe uebersetzt, ohnedie originale Widmung an Freud. Im Jahr 1930 sagte A. A. Brill,dass Rank geisteskrank sei und vertrieb ihn aus der APA. Noch schlimmer, diejenigen, die von Rank analysiert worden waren undMitglieder des APA oder IPV bleiben wollten, mussten nochmals voneinem orthodoxen Freudianer analysiert werden!

Dieser Neudruck [1993, amerikanische] erscheint mitten ineiner Rank’schen Renaissance und zu einer Zeit, als dieKurzetherapie ein Teil des Mainstream geworden ist. Ott Rank ist der Gruender der Kurztherapie und sogar orthodoxe Psychoanalytikerentdeckten spaeter die unentbehrlichen Beitraege dieses Mannes zumFreud’schen Unternehmen. Ich hoffe, dass–nach mehr als einemhalben Jahrhundert–diese Buch zusammen mit den Werken von Freud und Ferenczi, die ewige Suche zum Verstaendnis der menschlichenPsyche und Gesellschaft voranbringen wird.–Heidelberg, Nov. 1997

In the discussion:

I asked Esther Menaker: “Would you say Otto Rank was the firstfeminist in Freud’s circle?” She answered, “I wouldn’t call hima feminist in the ideological sense, but, because Freud did notunderstand women very well, Rank’s ideas were more advanced inthat area. However, that gave no advantage to Rank because thosewho opposed him were more powerful.”

After Peter Rudnytsky’s talk, I said: “I believe Rank’s laterwork is relevant to psychoanalysis. If you are trying to seewhat is alive and what is dead in his work, and you cut him inhalf, only a corpse remains. That is like an art criticanalyzing Picasso’s blue period while denying that cubism is art,or a music critic saying Beethoven’s early quartets are a finetribute to Haydn and Mozart but the late quartets are a departurefrom legitimate music.” Furthermore, in reading the full text ofP.R.’s paper, I would point out that Rank did not cut people offin brief therapy in such a harsh, cruel, autocratic way, nor didanyone I know of describe him as remote, antiseptic, etc. like asurgeon (despite what he wrote–there is a parallel here withFreud). And, as my book points out, Rank alone stood with Freudas a liberal with respect to homosexuals as psychoanalyticcandidates: the others were negative. P.R. is quite selective inhis use of examples to criticize Rank.

Finally, in one of the last discussion periods I said:”Prof. Peter Gay (in his Freud biography) describes my work onRank as a ‘labor of love’, which means it is intellectually weak,subjective, partisan. But Gay (like Rudnytsky) is not objective,although he claims to be. What concerns me is that partisanshipis taboo in scholarly work, we must pretend to be more objectiveeven though, as Rank points out, we cannot be entirely free fromour own ideologies. It is better to acknowledge them, and makeroom for an element of subjectivity. Perhaps that is a will-expression that makes some of us more comfortable and others moreanxious as we pursue our work. If every will-expression isaccompanied by guilt, as Rank said, perhaps we need to askwhether denial of partisanship is a scholarly defense againstwill in the academic venue–a defense that serves us poorly, andleaves our students and colleagues wondering about our lack ofhonesty.

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

I. Kunstschaffen und Persoenlichkeitsentwicklung

I. Creative Urge and Personality Development

The struggle of the artist against the art-ideology, against the creative impulse and even against his own work also shows itself in his attitude towards success and fame; these two phenomena are but an extension, socially, of the process which began subjectively with the vocation and creation of the personal ego to be an artist. In this entire creative process, which begins with self-nomination as artist and ends in the fame of posterity, two fundamental tendencies — one might almost say, two personalities of the individual — are in continual conflict throughout: one wants to eternalize itself in artistic creation, the other in ordinary life — in brief, immortal man vs. the immortal soul of man.

Image by Jeff Reese, photographer, accompanying text from Otto Rank, Art and Artist selected by Reese. Exhibit catalog contains 14 images and text, with introduction by Jay Belloli. © 1998 Cynthia Broan Gallery, 423 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10014. 212-633-6525.

Excerpt from “Recommended Reading” in the Washington Post, 29 Oct. 1989:

Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, Rank’s masterwork, was published by Knopf in 1932. Critic Ludwig Lewisohn called it “epoch making,” and high praise followed from readers such as Anais Nin, Henry Miller, and Paul Goodman. But the 450-page tome went out of print and has been hard to find. Now it is available in paperback from Norton.

Art and Artist takes up aesthetics, play, architecture, myth, language, the graphic arts, success, fame and renunciation. Rank speaks not to the aesthete but to the artist in each of us: the individual struggling for balance between involvement with life, i.e., creation of self, and the need to withdraw and create something permanent, to achieve a form of immortality. This is a brilliant, readable work of social psychology addressing the broadest themes of cultural evolution. It should appeal to general readers and should be on reading lists in art history and philosophy, as well as the social sciences.

Rank wrote under the shadow of the gathering storm of European fascism. How good, then, to see him dismiss at the outset “the superiority of a particular culture or the preferableness of a particular style or the eminence of a particular race over all others.”

–E. James Lieberman

Note: Translated by Charles Francis Atkinson (Knopf, 1932); Rank’s original German text, collated from the manuscript at Columbia University by Bertram Mueller, will at last be published in 2000 by Psychosocial-Verlag, Giessen. Unfortunately the recent Norton edition replaces Ludwig Lewisohn’s brilliant preface with an essay by Anais Nin.

You may Purchase this Book right now

Truth & Reality

Steve Nyberg, graduate student Adelphi University; e-mail icelandspar AT aol.com

“How many times do we hear nowadays the expression, ‘I cannot understand what is going on,’ indicating that our conception of the human being is insufficient to account for something which must be human after all, but which we have to consider ‘irrational’ because it does not fit into our rational scheme of things” (Rank, Beyond Psychology 1941, p.14). Before the end of his therapeutic career, Freud “fought for and about his rational ideas” (BP, 272). Freud also had help. “As a matter of fact, Freud’s psychological system, which was supposed to be the result of scientific empiricism, has been received and taken up as an ideology fought for and against with a zeal only comparable to that shown in religious wars” (BP, 272).

“As it is, Freud’s causal interpretation of the analytic situation as repetition (chiefly in recollection) of the past—instead of an emphasis on it as a new experience in the present—amounts to a denial of all personal autonomy in favor of the strictest possible determinism” (BP, 278). One needs to go beyond Freudian psychology. Otto Rank was the first to take us there! He writes, “Yet this, our ‘beyond psychology,’ does not mean a simple acceptance of the modern emphasis on other factors, such as economics, politics or technique, determining human behavior. It is an emphasis upon the dynamic forces governing life and human behavior, in a word, the irrational; whereas our present psychology is conceived of as a rational explanation of human behavior, at best, a rationalization of the irrational but not an acceptance of it as an essential driving force” (BP, 23).

Otto Rank presents a “new vision of the therapeutic process” (Truth and Reality, 1929, p.ix [Jessie Taft, ed. & tr.]) Like the therapist, the patient (now consumer), “would like to possess creative power positively also” (TR, 112). This creative power involves a “continuous rebuilding or building anew” (112). Knowledge is a form of experience because, like experience, it is used in the “continuous rebuilding or building anew” (112). The experienced patient (or consumer) wants and needs knowledge! In folklore, the hero is typically, “the unhappy finder of truth” (85). Let the reader also take the risk! Truth is “subjective,” “an emotion” (77), an “inner experience,” a knowing that “opposes the uncertainty of reality” (93). “Truth is an inner actuality in contrast to the outer truth of the senses, the so-called reality” (47). “Truth is accordingly a psychological problem” (77).

Regarding sex, “Thus we find the sexual impulse of man developing in two different directions, according to which the power of sex over the individual is accepted and submitted to or resisted by way of will-ful control. This latter attitude distinguishes civilized man from his primitive ancestors because it also leads to the achievements of human culture—not, however, without man’s growing need to submit to the coercion of sex through the yielding love-emotion” (BP, 234). In fact, Rank notes that sex leads to a social point of view. “The individual’s inner resistance to the biological sex urge, insofar as it does not serve the aim of purely personal pleasure, must be taken as the starting point of any investigation of social behavior. With all his astonishing regulations of the sexual life, primitive man was actually creating a sexual self, that is to say, he set man-made sexuality as against natural sex” (213).

The Dangers of Psychohistory

Rank notes three of mankind’s “age old prejudices” (BP, 187). “The first prejudice, namely, that the sexual act is necessarily pleasurable, is obviously contradicted by nature herself. We have only to look at the animal kingdom to be convinced that as a rule it is a painful struggle, to be avoided, if possible; one which the human being had to idealize in order to accept it at all. Closely related to this widespread illusion is another assumption taken for granted, that every human being wants to live as long as possible, or for that matter wants to live at all. To risk death, or even to seek it, is not necessarily an unbiological gesture. There are people who want to die, without justfiably being diagnosed as ’suicidal.’ Especially when death comes suddenly and painlessly, it need not represent an escape but can be real deliverance, particularly when one’s life has been fulfilled or is to be fulfilled by dying. Last, but not least, is the prejudice which includes all others, namely, that everyone’s happiness is the same. For this assumption causes us to designate as ‘neurotic’ any other whose ideas of happiness do not coincide with ours. Herein lies the greatest sin of psychology: that it sets up absolute standards derived from a rational interpretation of one prevailing type by which to judge not only our fellow men but also to interpret personalities and behavior of the past” (BP, 188).

Continuing with the number 3, Rank notes 3 ages of man, 3 world views, and 3 types of people: “In the sphere of consciousness we see these various levels of development toward ideal formation comprehended in three formulae which correspond to three different ages, world views and human types. The first is the Apollonian, know thyself; the second the Dionysian, be thyself; the third the Critique of Reason, ‘determine thyself from thyself’ (Kant). The first rests on likeness to others and leads in the sense of the Greek mentality to the acceptance of the universal ideal; know thyself in order to improve thyself (in terms of universal norms). It is therefore not knowledge for the sake of self, but knowledge for the goal of adaptation. The second principle in contrast to the first repudiates likeness and the improvement based on it, as it demands the acceptance of what one is anyway. In contrast to the principle of the Delphic Apollo, I have designated it as Dionysian because, in contrast to adaptation, it leads to ecstatic-orgiastic destruction. The true self, if it is unchained in Dionysian fashion, is not only anti-social, but also unethical and therefore the human being goes to pieces on it. Here comes in the Kantian ‘Determine thyself from thyself’ in the sense of a true self knowledge and simultaneously an actual self creation as the first constructive phase of the problem” (TR, 119-120).

“We see at once in these three types, which represent a line of development, the relation to reality and to the fellow man is different” (TR, 113). The truth and reality of it all is, “The individual must live through for himself all stages of his evolution. That cannot be avoided and should not be, for just this living through and fighting through constitute the valuable, the constructive, the creative which does not inhibit the will but strenghtens and develops it” (TR, 109). The artist falls into type 3: The spiritualy creative type which I have characterized as ‘artist,’ lives in constant conflict. The artist solves it for himself and others since he transposes the will affirmation creatively into knowledge” (TR, 67). The artist, like the therapist, “possesses creative power positively” (BP, 162).

Otto Rank

What shall live immortally in song

Must perish in life.

Schiller, “Die Götter Griechenlands” The following essays on the national epic, which are gradually being published in sequence, concentrate on the Homeric poems, admired and criticized in equal measure. These essays are fragments of a greater project whose conception and preliminary research lie many years back, but whose publication would most likely have been delayed even longer were it not for the war. However, this is not to imply that the topic, which concerns the great struggles of peoples throughout world history — struggles so decisive for the destiny of civilization — was furthered by the war or coerced by it in a particular direction. Indeed the purely psychological statement of the problem and certain perspectives toward a solution arise from the realm of psychoanalysis, which is beginning to manifest itself as a necessary methodological principle in various areas of psychology. In fact, even our era, more and more absorbed in realism, stands under the domination of inner forms to a greater extent than it believes or wishes to acknowledge. Indeed, perhaps due specifically to this unacknowledged inner compulsion, our era seeks a refuge in the passionate impulse for exteriorization. It is all the more true that the psychological realm remains the last and highest court of appeal in the idealistic considerations of science, even when the researcher attempts to “understand” the strict laws of nature and of human destiny. This, in turn, is nothing more than bringing them into correspondence with his orientation to the world — an orientation determined by his psychological constitution.

In its confirmed results the psychoanalytical research method has thus revealed laws whose range, transcending technical and general interest, spans the history of mankind as he became human, and of his shaping of the world. What intelligence has invented, what reason has understood, what the mind has devised — this has all flowed forth from the same few sources of human need, longing, and renunciation; it has all been formed in correspondence with the rigid norms of inexorable necessity and has been intended to satisfy the quintessence of human desire.

The mechanisms uncovered by Freud in the process of healing psychological disturbances reign in the immeasurable realm of human fantasy creation, from the idée fixe of the madman to the highly valued work of art, which likewise basically serves as a correction of unsatisfying reality. The extent to which the national epic and the legend-creation it is based on also obey these laws of individual inner life, the psychological tendencies it obeys, the social functions it fulfills, and the cultural stages and historical events it reflects, will be investigated in the following essays from the viewpoint of psychoanalysis.

Ten years ago Freud (1908) already emphasized the “epic” character of certain formal characteristics of fantasy creation which correspond to certain psychological tendencies. He thus provided the impulse for the study of the creation of the epic. But beyond the difficulties in the material itself and the complications that centuries of scholarly effort to understand it had produced, another problem presented itself which held back especially the psychologist from fruitfully deepening his interest in the problem of the national epic: the plot of the epic, beloved for its poetic beauty, lay as far from us conceptually as the place of action lay from us physically, so that a sensitive feeling for the text, necessary for an ultimate understanding, uncovered clues only in the few universally human elements, but failed to penetrate the details and the structural totality.

With its violent external tumult and inner revaluations, war, which Greek wisdom characterizes as the father of all things, has compensated for this deficit in one fell swoop: through the most intense personal experience, war has brought the heroic struggles and popular uprisings of the past, with their eternal themes, painfully close to the psychologist, oriented as he is toward individualistic detail. The cleft between the individual, who aims for personal pleasure, and society, which demands conformity and renunciation, had in any case been only imperfectly concealed by wife, family, clan and state. Now this cleft was suddenly bridged by war, which to a great extent wiped out individual characteristics while producing a dramatic increase in the feeling of solidarity and unity — a feeling strengthened through the most basic need for survival. Thus was achieved an orientation to the problem making it possible to grasp the folk-psychological riddle present in the great epic creations by utilizing the individual-psychological means of observation, now permeated with the most intense feeling for society.

For it is not at all obvious that the social strivings and democratic ideas dominating our time, which in the war have found powerful impulses towards realization, are the product of such an intense collective feeling as was characteristic of the peoples of Classical times. Indeed, these strivings seem more like a reaction to the individualistic, separate strivings of the individual: to the extent that he feels himself a member of society, he perceives these individualistic strivings as oppressive. This occurs in the form of social conscience, unknown to the individuality of Classical times, which felt itself fully one with society. This is also one of the reasons no national epic has appeared in modern times, despite the great events which are the prerequisite of the epic. For in addition to the remembered experience of events important to the people and which have not yet moved from the twilight of legend into the historical light of consciousness, the production of a national epic requires an individuality which knows itself to be one with the past, present, and future of the people. Such an individuality unites in balanced harmony both sides of human nature, the individualistic and the social, whose relative proportions determine the entire orientation to the world. Yet it does so without needing to play them against each other as extremes in order to maintain the balance necessary for existence. Thus it is no coincidence that the decisive events of the Dorian and Germanic migrations or of the battles among the lineages of India, which occurred in dark primeval times and determined the destiny

of civilization for centuries, found expression in epic poems such as have not been produced in connection with the great events of recent times. Yet the catastrophe of culture now reflected in the full light of the realistic historical orientation of the analytical-individualizing conscious has made possible a psychological
understanding of the development and origin of the epic.

Beyond the internal extension that drew me, as a modern individual enmeshed in personal problems, into a stream of societal feeling and consciousness, this approach was made possible by a degree of complementary external extension, which forever impressed on my restless senses the unforgettable image of that glorious region of the world which in the Homeric battle epic is the reward of the victor. For fleeting moments, in the shimmering azure hues of the coast of Asia Minor, the eye of the central European city dweller, sated as it was with the cheerful skies of Italy and the sublime Greek landscape, found a delightful place of rest while, within view of the “Queen of Cities,” fighting raged over control of the crucial waterway connecting Europe with Classical Asia, just as in the primeval times described by the Homeric poet. Marveling in silence, I was unable to visit the ruins of Troy and the small trading city of Smyrna, which today pulsates with vibrant life — just as it did when the greatest poet in history was born there. Yet perhaps the very proximity of this longed for but unattainable destination, like that of the Trojan stronghold, affected my fantasy more powerfully than whatever the stones might have said. On a crystal clear autumn evening, the view from the windblown forest cemetery on Ejub extended over the now truly gilded Golden Horn to the indescribable silhouette of Istanbul, to the straits and foothill-like Prince Islands beyond, and to the many-faceted threshold of the Asian world, so far-removed from us. This view permitted me so thoroughly to forget all the misfortunes of the difficult journey that the spirit of classical antiquity, soaring over the landscape, came to life in a way undreamt of. It suddenly became clear that one could love a city — love it for its beauty — like a woman from a fairy-tale. All the fighting and struggle over a city become comprehensible when the city unites within itself all things and offers with a noble gesture all that makes external and inner life worth living.

Intimately connected with my origins in Vienna, yet grown beyond them, I suddenly felt a kinship with the people of Smyrna. Happy-golucky and sentimental in equal measure, they love music and dance; the men love harmless amusements with their incomparable women, described as the most beautiful in the world. It became immediately clear that it is no coincidence that these two cities, intimately related in feeling and outlook, brought forth the great epic-heroic poems of the Greek and Germanic peoples. With shudders of admiration I perceived other strings playing along, playing the music that through the centuries connects the present with the epochs that live on in the poem. Just as in those times, today again there is fighting over possession of the bridge to Asia. Just as before, today again Austria must drive back invading barbarian hordes coming from the east. Just as before, today again nations react to the barbarians’ senseless destructive rage with penitence and feelings of guilt, and seek unsuccessfully to justify these in diplomatic acts and secret documents. Just as before, a single great cry of pain wrenches forth from the breast of self-tormenting humanity. Just as before, the

wailing of mothers and the moans of the wounded penetrate the ever-lofty arch of the firmament. Just as before, our hearts are rent by the nameless misery of the refugee, the nearly hopeless despair of prisoners clutched from their native soil, and the expiring glance of the dying, which tenderly attempts once more to embrace the beauty of this unhappy world. As before, though, we are also moved by the uplifting passions of our phenomenal efforts. Pride and a feeling of power fill our minds, which, over all the wailing, exult in the triumph of the victor’s unshakable determination. For us, though, these life-promoting energies are mixed with depressing feelings of pity — which for the primeval hero became conscious only afterward, as suffering and regret; it is these feelings which led to the explanatory justification of inalterable events provided in the epic poem.

Yet for us, late-born descendants who have accomplished much but who are still burdened with all the worries of bygone epochs, it is imperative to find within our minds compensation for all the conflicting emotions whose manifestation so inexorably determines the fate of individuals and nations, and lastly of humanity. This fate was proclaimed by the epic poems of bygone millennia long before we existed and were able to hear them, and will be proclaimed long after the insistent roar of the present has ceased to resound in our tired ears.

I¹ The Problem “There is still much argument about the epic, but in these discussions the first and last word belongs to psychology.” Steinthal

These words, written half a century ago by Steinthal, one of the founders of ethnopsychology, deserve now more than ever to be taken seriously. Therefore, in a new attempt to grasp the essence of the national epic in the light of psychology, we are obliged to take his words as a starting point. Far from leading to a simplification or a solution, the discussion of the epic has sharpened, producing apparently incompatible and opposing opinions. Yet since Steinthal so boldly rendered psychology the right to speak, it has not again expressed itself. Only gradually did traditional philology, which long considered the epic its private domain, admit as cooperative partners other branches of knowledge which had subordinated themselves to it; only very late did philology deign to recognize their equal status. Specifically, it was the archeological excavations in Asia Minor, Greece, and the Greek Islands — begun by Schliemann in the 1880’s, continued by his successor Dörpfeld, and crowned with Evans’ finds in Crete — which brought forth a substantially new orientation to the history of the epic and considerably widened the corresponding research by bringing to light an old culture demonstrating the real bases of Greek epic tradition. Today, then, the “epic question” has become a complex of various isolated problems; in the effort to solve these problems, there is equal involvement from the fields of literary history, esthetics, linguistics, history, mythology and the study of legends, archeology, and cultural history. It should be no surprise that this continuing specialization in research and results has only sharpened the conflict of opinions at the present time. This has occurred even though the “science of the spade,” initially regarded with contempt, and standing in contrast to “higher criticism” –

analytical, and suspect due to its subjective foundations — finally won respect and recognition through the evidence it has provided: this evidence is positive and amenable to objective verification.

Any specialist approaching the problems of the national epic today is admonished by the unsatisfying progress and contradictory results of previous research not to take on too large a task; limitations on his ability to work and conceptualize also prevent him from doing so. Indeed, the rash attempts of earlier writers to solve the question in its entirety, smoothly and completely, have given way to a series of individual, careful, sharply delineated investigations which in turn, through the details, all too often lose sight of the totality within which they must position themselves. In the struggle of opinions, fought with intensity and bitterness, the contentious topic itself has been completely disregarded through personal attempts to refute one’s opponent. Thus, through isolation and exaggeration, the contradictions have sharpened to the point of total incompatibility. By contrast, one must concentrate one’s gaze on the matter and learn again to regard it naively, as the epic poet saw it. In this respect, a psychological approach to the topic has the advantage that it must turn directly to the material — thus far nearly untouched — although, as the last court of appeal of all human knowledge, this approach requires a maximally comprehensive knowledge of the various problems and of the solutions proposed thus far. On the other hand, it permits, indeed requires one to leave the established paths of research and to undertake independent research programs that may again lead to a new classification of the epic questions decisive for the understanding of the entire Classical Greek world. Still, one should expect no comprehensive solution eliminating all the difficulties and contradictions arising in specialized areas. Rather, one should expect only a psychological contribution that attempts to clear the way, through the undergrowth of tortuous criticism, toward free view and access into the understanding of epic poetry. As a necessary condition for the legitimacy of the independent, psychological approach, one must assume that it will nevertheless take into consideration the established results of various specialized investigations and that within the context of its framework the standard, basic questions will be respected and perhaps promoted. If it turns out that the already achieved but apparently contradictory results of scientific research over centuries can be reconciled or brought closer together, that is all that one can reasonably expect from a psychological approach to the topic. In other fields it has repeatedly been shown how progress has been delayed due to the peculiar manner in which humans conduct research, and that an unprejudiced orientation that keeps to the middle ground and incorporates without contradiction as many earlier findings as possible always comes closest to the truth. Yet by its nature, psychology is called to deliver just such a basis, previously lacking in research on the epic: it is the task of psychology to place in its focus — the inner life of human beings — the multiplicity and diversity of external forms and thence to make them comprehensible. Thus far, though, academic psychology has been able to do justice to this endeavor, its actual main task, only in a very inadequate way: in self-deceiving blindness it exhausted itself in the description of psychological processes and has been too lacking in approach and methodology to pronounce its own decisive word in other realms of

knowledge. Now, though, the endeavors of psychoanalysis, commencing soon after Schliemann’s discoveries, have brought to light from the psychological underworld valuable, previously lost and buried relics that provide glimpses into the psychological development of mankind, and which, though incomplete, are just as important as the glimpses into the cultural prehistory of mankind provided by archeological finds. This comparison extends not only to the discovery of previously unknown material, but also to the procedures revealing this material and to the utilization of these fragments of a life which came to an end long ago. Psychoanalysis places the unconscious, hidden beneath the thin upper surface, in its proper role: the unconscious converts the individual, distinct fragments into a total picture, and complements experiences gained elsewhere when, on the basis of solid criteria, that is appropriate. Critics have often accused psychoanalysis of working with unproved hypotheses, but in so doing each applies a standard of demonstrative power appropriate to his own scientific field, but completely inappropriate to psychoanalysis. Archeology, too, must make use of heuristic principles, which, so long as they prove useful and enlightening, are taken as established laws. Yet as these are uncovered in the course of scientific investigation they can repeatedly be modified in the context of new discoveries. This concludes the discussion of the justification for applying psychological views to an area of knowledge so similar to “depth psychology” in its procedures and methods. Further, the aspects of analysis that can be applied to the problems of the national epic are by their very nature so general and undogmatic that the objections brought forth against the methodology fail to apply. The psychoanalytical way of thinking, highly tolerant toward greatly varying views and mutually conflicting interpretations, takes as its most basic tenet the vertical organization of all psychological phenomena, which corresponds to a layering of the material analogous to that observed in archeology. The application of some methodological approaches and established results of psychoanalysis to such an eminently complex product as the national epic is unlikely to lead to exaggerated conclusions since non-psychological research, in the results obtained thus far, has established a solid framework for discussion. Yet within this framework there still remain so many riddles that the application of our psychological knowledge requires no special justification. To the extent required by our investigation, the following discussions will orient the reader to the history of this research and to the unsatisfying situation in which it currently finds itself.

FOOTNOTE

1. The first five sections to be published are drafts produced in the winter of 1914-1915 during the war. So far these drafts comprise two general chapters and three chapters introducing the Homeric problem. To these will be added two major chapters completing the topic of the construction of the epic among the Greeks. The complete research plan also comprises an investigation of the Nibelungenlied, views of the epic poems of other peoples, and an examination of the artistic epic and of epic influences in drama — all within the framework developed here. To summarize the results, this framework will be further presented in a final chapter characterizing the essence of the national

epic. Literary sources which have currently become inaccessible will
be added later.

Translators’ note This essay, until now untranslated, dates from the middle of Rank’s 20 year association with Freud, and between the two editions of Myth of the Birth of the Hero. It shows the psychoanalytic virtuosity for which Rank was known during the early years of the movement. Based on the traditional Freudian construct of the Oedipus complex, this essay has a complexity and depth that make it a valuable addition to the psychoanalytic approach to literature today, though Rank himself went beyond its theoretical confines in his later work, especially Art and Artist.

–Gregory C. Richter and E. James Lieberman, October, 2002

The Play within Hamlet¹Toward an Analysis and Dynamic Understanding of the Work²Otto Rank

According to Freud, Hamlet’s inability to avenge the murder of his father by killing his uncle lies in his Oedipus complex, which prevents him from killing the man who eliminated his father — thus fulfilling Hamlet’s own unconscious wishes — and who usurped Hamlet’s father role with respect to his mother. The entire drama consists of a series of artistically depicted delays in the execution of this act, made necessary by Hamlet himself. Only at the drama’s close, in the great general death scene, does this act dare to emerge as such.

Now, within this complex apparatus of inhibitions and delays, I

would like to show the meaning of the much discussed “play within the play.” I argue that it is the climax and turning point of the work’s dramatic and psychological development.

Initially, Hamlet simply mourns the sudden death of his father [Hamlet] and is disturbed by the hasty remarriage of his mother [Gertrude]. Then, learning from the father’s ghost that he had been murdered, vengeance upon the murderer becomes Hamlet’s sole purpose in life. Yet he does nothing to avenge the murder; he just feigns madness, seemingly to develop a plan undisturbed — but the plan never materializes. On the contrary, it is only the actors’ arrival and the moving soliloquy in rehearsal that confront Hamlet: instead of carrying out vengeance he has only been holding forth like a comic actor, feigning insanity.

An internal connection, however, has a greater effect on Hamlet than this external one. Specifically, the actor’s lines concern the violent killing of a king (Priam) and the anguish of his faithful wife (Hecuba). The description moves the actor himself to tears, reminding the prince that given the events which have occurred (”for Hecuba” (3:2)), he has all the more reason to let his deepest emotions flow into action rather than idly dream. Yet even this soul-mirror fails to incite action. Just as he had been content to play a madman before, he merely imitates the actor³:

[I] Must like a whore unpack my heart with words And fall a-cursing, like a very drab, A scullion! Fie upon’t! (2:2)

At this point Hamlet hits upon the idea of staging a play depicting the murder of his father, so as to bring the murderer out from among the spectators, to reveal his guilt. Simultaneously Hamlet seeks to justify his new doubts about the specter he encountered: from the murderer’s involuntary confession, Hamlet hopes to gain the certainty he needs to enact vengeance. In fact, through its effect on the king, the play provides confirmation, but Hamlet still cannot avenge the murder. His scruples and doubts correspond throughout to the illusory considerations representing the actual unconscious source of his inhibition.⁴

One must not be misled by these distracting themes of both protagonist and playwright into regarding the play only in terms of its effect on the king, as proof of his guilt. Attending to the play in relation to Hamlet himself provides a new understanding of the mysterious mechanisms of the dramatic and psychological developments. Just as the actor’s speech about the slaughter of Priam admonishes reluctant Hamlet to carry out his mission of vengeance, the play depicting his father’s murder rekindles his repressed impulse for vengeance. This helps launch the decisive deed — akin to how a would-be murderer might steel himself by gulping alcohol. That Hamlet constantly needs urging is shown by the entire plot of the drama, and in great detail by specific scenes.⁵ This is especially true of the apparition of the dead father during the conversation between Hamlet and his mother, which serves “to whet [his] almost blunted purpose” (3:4) and

suggests that the specter had this function from the start, as revealed in its first appearance “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” (1:5).

The play is introduced by a pantomime that summarizes its plot and ingeniously informs the audience, since the actual performance of the play is of course interrupted by the king’s Ibycus-like revelation. In the chain of impulses rising against Hamlet’s inhibitions, the pantomime, both temporally and psychologically, produces the middle ground between the Priam speech, which makes the prince conscious of his inaction, and the actual play, which serves to drive him closer to revenge by making him, in effect, a witness to the crime.⁶ The pantomime makes its point then, by the gentler means of visual presentation (like a dream or fantasy). The action and eloquence of the play, for which Hamlet himself supplies most of the text, appear as the last, most powerful step in this sequence of impulses. There are various reasons for and consequences of the fact that the play still fails to provoke the act that Hamlet has been on the verge of carrying out all along. To understand the finer structure of the work we can investigate these reasons and consequences.

The main reason is that the dramatized regicide does not simply function to confront the murderer. Rather, as if behind a double screen, there lies a deeper, hidden meaning. Hamlet, who arranged for the performance, sees his inhibited impulse enacted: in the play, the longed-for murder of the present king is accomplished.

The king murdered in the play represents not only Hamlet’s father, but also his uncle (and stepfather), of course. This does not hinge on the player king himself, in whom both figures are melded, but on his murderer, at whose appearance Hamlet interjects: “This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King” (3:2), emphasizing the identification between himself and the present king.⁷ The actor’s speech sets forth Hamlet’s task according to a Classical model; in the pantomime, there is a visual demonstration of what he must do, while in the play, word and deed combine as incitement to do what he has seen. However, as he had previously imitated the actor, limiting his emotional release to words (given the example of Priam’s murder), he now limits himself with an “enacted” murder of his uncle, failing to derive from it the impulse to action. Once again, Hamlet is spared from carrying out the obligatory deed in reality. He cannot kill the king, whom he unexpectedly finds, moments after the play ends, praying penitently. Claudius’ behavior provides additional, indirect evidence for my argument that the murder of the player king is intended not to encourage Hamlet to carry out the deed, but to substitute for it. With the words “Give me some light! Away!” (3:2), Claudius hurries out of the audience, and in the next scene reveals his fear of a possible attack by Hamlet:

I like him not, nor stands it safe with us

To let his madness range. (3:3)

Claudius arranges to send his dangerous stepson to England,

accompanied by his two friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who carry secret instructions that Hamlet is to be killed. But Hamlet averts this fate by altering the “letter of Uriah” so that it applies to his companions.⁸ That Hamlet can do this without scruple is, as Freud points out, again the result of an external stimulus: the defeat of the Norwegian army of Fortinbras, sacrificed for “an eggshell” (4:4), which leads Hamlet to place a low value on human life.

Given that the murderer in the play is to be identified with Hamlet, the further significance of that character can now be developed. This more closely accounts for Hamlet’s subsequent failure to act. The entire conflict in his soul arises from his ambivalent orientation to his father: he is unable to kill the man who has carried out Hamlet’s own childhood wishes. It is actually the murderous impulse toward the physical father, whose place beside the mother the child wishes to occupy, that is inhibited in Hamlet by all his conscious scruples and the unconscious opposing impulses. The murderous impulse is always lurking, yearning to be satisfied. In line with this urge, he revels in recalling the patricide carried out for him by Claudius. He has the speech about Priam’s murder declaimed, and arranges the performance of a play that recapitulates the murder of his father with Hamlet himself in the role of murderer. For this reason, not because Claudius (about whose guilt Hamlet has no doubts) has been proved guilty, Hamlet is seized by a high-spirited mood with wild exhilaration after the

play — interrupted after the murder scene. Of performers I am familiar with, none has conveyed this mood in Hamlet better than Albert Bassermann [1867-1952]. Hamlet’s triumph over the death of his father is allowed to pour forth unchecked this once, under the guise of outwitting the murderer. The play thus forces the actual murderer into involuntary confession and reveals Hamlet’s unconscious “thought-guilt” through the manic emotions it brings out.

Further evidence for this comes in the scene where the exultant Hamlet — clearly so characterized in obscene remarks to Ophelia -

- seeks out his mother, to whom unimpeded access results from the removal of his father (and father’s representative, Hamlet’s uncle). The final words in this scene strikingly reveal the degree to which unconscious sexual desire for his mother drives the parricide:

…Now could I drink hot blood And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on. Soft, now to my mother. O heart, lose not thy nature!⁹ Let not ever The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom. Let me be cruel, not unnatural; I will speak daggers to her, but use none. (3:2)

With these words, Hamlet admonishes himself to moderation toward his mother, to whom clear access follows the (fictive) killing of his father. He would be no second Nero toward his mother. This

thought admonishes him against matricide consciously, but unconsciously it relates to the mother-incest inextricably connected with the name of Nero: to a degree, opportunity for incest now exists.

Until the enacted murder in the play, Hamlet required continual reinforcement of his vengeful impulses. After the play, which brought Hamlet as close as possible to real vengeance, there now appears a series of inhibitions to the now liberated incest impulse. Previously, no stimulus was strong enough to make Hamlet kill. Now no inhibition seems strong enough to keep him from incest — the second part of the deed. Summoning up the image of Nero as an example unworthy of imitation is insufficient, so on the way to his mother’s bedchamber Hamlet once again has to have an encounter with his uncle-father, who shows him the unreality of the murder scene that has just occurred, and whom he is unable to kill, despite the opportunity. Hamlet had justified the staging of The Mousetrap through doubts about the reliability of the specter, and here again he shores up his inhibitions with illusory arguments. He decides that revenge by killing the murderer during prayer would be unsuitable, and must await a better occasion:

When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,

Or in th’ incestuous pleasure of his bed,

At game a-swearing, or about some act

That has no relish of salvation in ‘t. (3:3) This peculiar justification, too, hints at the identification of

the murdered king with his murderer, achieved in the play: Hamlet wishes to carry out his revenge when Claudius is asleep — as was Hamlet’s father when Claudius killed him. Immediately thereafter, Polonius, listening behind a curtain in the queen’s bedchamber, inhibits Hamlet’s lack of restraint toward his mother. He betrays his presence through a sound, and is stabbed through the curtain by Hamlet, who mistakes him for the king (”Is it the King?” — “I took thee for thy better” (3:4)).¹⁰

This actual killing of an obvious father- and king-surrogate¹¹constitutes Hamlet’s closest approach to real vengeance. Yet the effects of inhibition appear in that Hamlet kills Polonius without seeing him, not wishing to be certain of his victim’s identity. Further, he carries out this surrogate vengeance only when overcome by emotions relating to his mother, in whose presence it occurs: his emotions obscure his otherwise so clever evasions. And for this patricide he also receives the corresponding punishment, death at the hand of Laertes, son of Polonius, who is uninhibited in his pursuit of vengeance. But a third inhibition of his strong passion for his mother now comes into play. At the height of his tirade of accusations against her, as he speaks of her vile lovemaking with her “king of shreds and patches” (3:4), the ghost of his father, visible only to Hamlet, appears for a moment (without armor) to admonish him to be gentle with his mother and to carry out vengeance on his uncle. Thus the plot returns to the same situation as at the beginning of the drama, when the ghost

first appears to Hamlet (1:5), and from this point on he takes no steps to carry out vengeance.

Later, vengeance becomes possible only through accidental circumstances, and even then Hamlet achieves it only as he is dying, precluding his taking the place of Claudius.¹² Between the first and the second appearance of the ghost, the climax is the enacted murder in the play, recapitulating the crime of patricide – carried out vicariously by Hamlet. In connection with the ghostly apparition, through this fictive killing Hamlet wishes to assure himself that his father is truly dead — that he can no longer appear to him as a ghost. But this is specifically denied by the second appearance of the ghost in the queen’s bedchamber. Similarly, Hamlet’s discovery of King Claudius in prayer contradicts his murder as achieved in the play. Here, Hamlet recognizes unambiguously that he must act in reality, kill in reality — not merely “in jest” (3:2), as in the play. This he does, in that he can kill Polonius, the least threatening of the father figures in the drama.

Yet in Polonius Hamlet kills the father figure decisive for the situation. Indeed, the three father figures, who appear to him after the play (when he comes as close as possible to realizing his fantasy-wish for their elimination), appear specifically on his path toward possession of his mother — a path otherwise unencumbered following the dramatized murder. This characterizes them as impediments to Hamlet’s relationship with women. In

addition to all the motives mentioned above, the fact that Hamlet now kills Polonius rather than Claudius has a deeper explanation; Polonius is a father par excellence, who obstructs Hamlet’s sexual relationships as did his real father in relation to Hamlet’s mother.¹³ For it is Polonius who spies upon Hamlet with Ophelia, disapproves, and interferes by forbidding his daughter to associate with Hamlet.

The extent to which Hamlet identifies Ophelia with his mother has previously been pointed out by Brandes, who illuminates the psychological interpretation of the drama (Rank 1912:59, 1992:48). (Goethe also noted Hamlet’s identification of Ophelia with his mother.) It is not only Hamlet’s sexual freedom that Polonius obstructs; he binds Ophelia strictly to virtue and chastity. Lapsing into insanity following his death, she pours forth obscene pronouncements: in these her sexuality, so long suppressed, can now break forth. She has twice been robbed of her love object, since Hamlet has turned away from her. To deal with this loss, she chooses the path observed in so many psychoses: she identifies herself with one of the two persons she has lost, while consciously mourning the other. On one hand, this identification occurs through her imitation of Hamlet’s insanity, which she had considered genuine, and which, as a neurosis, indeed was genuine. On the other hand, this occurs through her indecent pronouncements, which are reminiscent of the way Hamlet, in his feigned insanity, had addressed her. The fact that she, like

Hamlet, lapses into mental disease upon the death of her father makes it clear that this is an identification intended by the playwright. On the other hand, Ophelia, as the chaste counterpart of Gertrude, represents fidelity, extending beyond death, in a woman who would rather succumb to insanity than betray the man she loves (father or husband).

For Hamlet, Ophelia clearly substitutes for his mother, and in this deeper sense Polonius is correct in his supposition: “The origin and commencement of his grief / Sprung from neglected love” (3:1). For in his very first appearance (1:2), Hamlet reveals that his mother’s infidelity before him and the world has made him mad. Among numerous, often subtle indications of Hamlet’s identification of Ophelia with his mother, I shall emphasize the clearest one as it brings us back to the murder scene in the play. During Hamlet’s encounter with Ophelia, to whom, incidentally, he preaches chastity just as he does to his mother (Rank 1912:59, 1992:48), Polonius secretly eavesdrops — just as he does during Hamlet’s encounter with his mother.¹⁴ That Hamlet kills the eavesdropper in his mother’s presence, and not in the first instance, serves to emphasize Polonius’ father role. The salient fantasy of father’s eavesdropping when the son is in the mother’s bedroom can be analytically conceived as a distortion of the primal childhood fantasy in which the son is the eavesdropper in the bedroom of the parents. This distortion arises through identification of the son with the father. The fact that this

typical expression of an excessively expressed Oedipus complex is found in the drama should provide even clearer confirmation for Freud’s interpretation (cf. Rank 1912:61,224; 1992:49-50,182), provided a less distorted form of this fantasy can be identified. Indeed, that is the play within the play. Here, in fact, Hamlet appears as the spectator of the conjugal affections of his parents. (This is especially true of the pantomime, where after the wife’s affectionate encounter with her first husband and his death by poisoning, the murderer successfully woos the widow.)¹⁵

The act observed by the son is expressed, albeit distorted, in universal human symbols. For the unusual manner in which the murder is perpetrated — the dripping of poison into the ear — can be explained only through the latent meaning of the scene. The significance of the poison as semen (impregnation = poisoning) has been established not only from the symbolism of folktales, but also from individual analysis¹⁶; Jones has noted the ear as organ of conception as a folk-psychological symbol.¹⁷ Further, the entire scene exhibits overtones of the Fall theme, suggested also by the snake: it is claimed that a snake has bitten the old king in his sleep (1,5). Hamlet’s relation to the sex act itself seems “Biblical” in the sense of Genesis and original sin; he attempts to instill in Ophelia and his mother a revulsion toward sex, which he abhors as animalistic. This seems to be one of the reasons why in the play (and in its model, the murder of the king) the sex act is represented only symbolically, in its individual elements.

These elements are freely rearranged to create the image of punishment for sexual transgression. From this compromise, which unifies transgression (the sex act of the parents) with punishment (by the son) in a single “play,” we can understand why the victim must be killed specifically in his sleep (as Hamlet demands: “in the’ incestuous pleasure of his bed” (3:3)). The ambiguous nature of the scene corresponds to the sadistic conceptualization of coitus — a conceptualization developed by the child in the course of his sexual investigations.¹⁸ In this sense, one can easily understand why Hamlet identifies with the actor who portrays the murderer — not only in terms of patricide, but also in the sense of replacing the father in the sex act of the parents.

There is evidence for this symbolic interpretation, which also makes more comprehensible the emotional dynamics and the corresponding dramatic portrayal. In the play, Hamlet arranges for a performance of the killing of his father, and, through identification with the murderer, eliminates his current competitor with respect to his mother. Yet he also sees in the play the sex act of his parents, and based on the same identification plays the role of the eliminated father. Just as the “sadistic” significance of the scene is intended to inspire him to vengeance, its sexual significance is intended to provoke him to incest (cf. the references to Nero). Yet, here again, he is satisfied with its mere portrayal. The extent to which the play does actually have this effect, though, is seen in the obscene

pronouncements Hamlet directs toward Ophelia before and especially
during the play.¹⁹ He attempts incest, as it were, not with his mother, who invites him to speak with her in vain, but with Ophelia, who for him is a complete mother substitute, and whom he had repelled just before the play, probably since he was in a position to win his actual love object, whom Ophelia merely represents. To this extent, while he “lies” in Ophelia’s lap (3:2), the play functions as a substitute not only for the killing of his father, but also for the sex act with his mother — given the example of the parental relationship depicted. On the other hand, this significance of the play places Hamlet in the childhood role of spectator of the parents’ affections, which, as a primal trauma, underlies his Oedipus complex and unites all its components in a single focus. Indeed, I have shown that the dramatic expression of this focus is the play.

In conclusion, I shall attempt to pursue Shakespeare’s personal relationship to the material and to its treatment in somewhat greater depth than has previously been achieved. There can be no doubt that the great significance given in Hamlet to the dramatic art and to actors relates to Shakespeare’s professional interests and his artistic ambitions. As is well known, he also worked as an actor, sometimes playing roles he wrote. I have tried to explain this psychologically in claiming “that acting is a fully valued psychic act and a more basic release for psychic states than the activity of the playwright. It is actually the actor who must

complete the drama, who must do what the playwright wishes to do but, owing to psychic defenses, cannot achieve. The actor ‘experiences’ what the playwright can only ‘dream’” (Rank 1912:231, 1992:187).²⁰ If we compare this psychological formula to insights derived from the analysis of the play within the play, we find that there, too, Shakespeare has supplied an unconscious admission of how drama offered him a substitute for many things he had to renounce in life, just as for Hamlet the play replaces acts he cannot carry out due to powerful inhibitions. From the nature of drama itself, it is clear which psychic mechanism allows an actor the release, forbidden to the playwright, of blocked emotions that cannot otherwise be overcome. This is identification, taken as far as the temporary suspension of one’s own personality. In Hamlet, of course, broad use is made of identification, and in the interpretation of this drama I have often had occasion to make recourse to it.²¹ Our investigation shows how such identification functions as a significant component in dramatic talent; it also shows us a motive for selecting an acting career — a motive not to be underestimated. In the child’s relationship to the p

Psychologist and Philosopher (1884 Vienna -- 1939 New York)

The Evolution of Psychotherapy Since Freud

by E. James Lieberman, M.D.