Otto Rank

Otto Rank (April 22, 1884 – October 31, 1939) was an Austrian psychologist. Born in Vienna as Otto Rosenfeld, he was also one of Sigmund Freud's closest aides and later colleagues and finally critic.

In the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society
Rank came to Freud's Wednesday discussion circle from a non-medical background. From 1906 he became secretary of the emerging Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Freud described him as "a pleasant, intelligent youngster ... qualified in mechanical engineering ... studying Latin and Greek for admission to university... I expect a good deal of him once he has got himself an education" (letter to Jung, 5th March 1908). Rank obtained a PhD in 1912. Rank was one of Freud's six close collaborators who were brought together in a secret "committee" or "ring" to defend the psycho-analytic mainstream as the disputes with Adler and then Jung developed. Rank was the most prolific author in the "Ring" besides Freud himself, extending psychoanalytic theory to the study of legend, myth, art, and other works of creativity. He worked particularly closely with Freud, not just in the secretarial role, but also in contributing additional material to later editions of "The Interpretation of Dreams".

In 1924 Rank published The Trauma of Birth, exploring how art, myth, religion, philosophy and therapy were illuminated by separation anxiety in the “phase before the development of the Oedipus complex” (p. 216). But there was no such phase in Freud’s theories. The Oedipus complex, Freud explained tirelessly, was the nucleus of the neurosis and the foundational source of all art, myth, religion, philosophy, therapy – indeed of all human culture and civilization. It was the first time that anyone in the inner circle had dared to suggest that the Oedipus complex might not be the supreme causal factor in psychoanalysis. It was also the first time that anyone in the inner circle had dared to suggest that there was a “pre-Oedipal” complex – a term that did not exist at that time. Rank was the first to use the term “pre-Oedipal” in a public psychoanalytic forum in 1925 (Rank, 1996, p. 43). In the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, Rank will be credited with coining this term, which is now mistakenly thought to have been introduced by Freud in 1932.

After some hesitation, Freud distanced himself from The Trauma of Birth, signalling to other members of his inner circle that Rank was perilously close to anti-Oedipal heresy. Confronted with Freud’s decisive opposition, Rank chose to resign in protest from his positions as Vice-President of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, director of Freud’s publishing house, and editor of Imago and Zeitschrift.

Post-Vienna Life and Work
In May 1926, Rank moved to Paris where he became an analyst for artists such as Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin and lectured at the Sorbonne (Lieberman, 1985).

In France and later in America, Rank enjoyed great success as a therapist and writer. Travelling frequently between France and America, Rank lectured at universities such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Pennsylvania on object-relational, experiential and “here-and-now” psychotherapy, art, the creative will, and “neurosis as a failure in creativity” (Rank, 1996).

He died in New York City in 1939 from a kidney infection.

Influence
Rollo May, a pioneer of existential psychotherapy in the United States, was deeply influenced by Rank’s post-Freudian lectures and writings and always considered Rank to be the most important precursor of existential therapy. Shortly before his death, Rollo May wrote the foreword to Robert Kramer's edited collection of Rank’s American lectures. “I have long considered Otto Rank to be the great unacknowledged genius in Freud’s circle,” said May (Rank, 1996, p. xi).

In 1936 Carl Rogers, the most influential psychologist in America after William James, invited Otto Rank to give a series of lectures in New York on Rank’s post-Freudian models of experiential and relational therapy. Rogers was transformed by these lectures and always credited Rank with having profoundly shaped "client-centered" therapy and the entire profession of counselling. "I became infected with Rankian ideas," said Rogers (Rank, 1996, p. 263).

The New York writer Paul Goodman, who was co-founder with Fritz Perls of the Gestalt method of psychotherapy, one of the most popular in the world today, described Rank’s post-Freudian ideas on art and creativity as “beyond praise” in Gestalt Therapy (Perls, Goodman and Hefferline, 1951, p. 395).

In 1974, the sociologist Ernest Becker won the Pulitzer prize for The Denial of Death (1973), which was based on Rank’s post-Freudian writings, especially Will Therapy (1929-31), Psychology and the Soul (1930) and Art and Artist (1932).

Today, Rank can be seen as one of the great pioneers in the fields of humanistic, existential, Gestalt and transpersonal psychology.

Major publications
Major works written by Otto Rank, by date of first publication.