About Otto Rank
Rank (Rosenfeld) Otto (1884-1939), psychologist and psychoanalyst, first
Secretary of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, member of Freud’s Committee, or
“Ring” of 7 and his closest associate (1906-1925). Honorary member, American
Psychoanalytic Association (1924-30). Lecturer: Sorbonne, Pennsylvania School of
Social Work, etc. He was born in Vienna, Austria, son of Simon Rosenfeld, an
artisan jeweler, and Karoline Fleischner. His older brother studied law while
Otto became a locksmith: the family could not afford higher education for both.
Close to his mother but alienated from his alcoholic father, Otto adopted “Rank”
in adolescence and formalized it a few years later, symbolizing self-creation, a
central theme of his life and work.
兰克·罗森菲尔德·奥托，心理学家师。维也纳协会首任秘书，委员会成员。
Of Jewish background, growing up in Catholic Vienna, Rank was a religious
skeptic who wrote his own Ten Commandments, among them “Thou shalt not give
birth reluctantly”. He read deeply in philosophy and literature, loved music,
and considered himself an artist, writing poetry and a literary diary. Before he
was 21 he read Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams (1900). He applied
psychoanalytic ideas in an essay on the artist; the manuscript came to Freud
(probably from Alfred Adler, Rank’s physician) which led to Rank’s appointment
as secretary of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1906. With Freud’s
financial and moral support, Rank obtained his Ph.D. from the University of
Vienna in 1912, the first candidate to do so with a psychoanalytic thesis
subject.
Rank became the acknowledged expert on philosophy, literature, and myth in the
Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and kept the Minutes (1906-1918; now published in
four volumes). Otto Rank became the most prolific psychoanalytic writer after
Freud, with Der Künstler (1907; expanded eds. 1918 and 1925), Der Mythus der
Geburt des Heldens (1909), Die Lohengrin Sage [his doctoral thesis] (1911), and
Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung und Sage (1912, 2nd ed. 1926), a 700-page survey of
world literature. Except for the posthumous Beyond Psychology (1941), Rank’s
books were written in his native German. Translations, mostly of his early
psychoanalytic works, exist in English, French, Italian, and Spanish.
Of the founders of the International Psychoanalytic Association, Rank was
closest to Freud geographically, professionally and personally. He helped edit
and contributed two chapters to Freud’s Die Traumdeutung (eds. 4-7, 1914-1922;
“Traum und Dichtung” and “Traum und Mythus”). He and Hanns Sachs edited the
journal Imago beginning in 1912; with Freud and Sandor Ferenczi he edited Die
Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse beginning in 1913. Rank witnessed the vicissitudes
and bitter endings of Freud’s relationships with Wilhelm Stekel, Alfred Adler,
and Carl Jung; Rank’s tenure with Freud lasted much longer – two decades,
exceeded only by that of his friend Sandor Ferenczi and his foe Ernest Jones.
Other works important in Rank’s Freudian period include “Ein Beitrag zum
Narcissismus,” (Jarbuch, 1911), Die Bedeutung der Psychoanalyse für die
Geisteswissenschaften (1912, with H. Sachs), Psychoanalytische Beitrage zur
Mythenforschung (1919), Die Don Juan Gestalt (1922), Der Doppelgänger (1925),
Eine Neurosenanalyse in Traumen (1924), Sexualität und Schuldgefühl (1926),
Technik der Psychoanalyse (I. Die Analytische Situation 1926; II. Die
Analytische Reaktion 1929; III. Die Analyse Des Analytikers 1931; II and III
translated as Will Therapy 1936), Grundzüge einer genetischen Psychologie (I.
Genetische Psychologie 1927, II. Gestaltung und Ausdruck der Personlichkeit
1928; III. Wahrheit und Wirklichkeit 1929, translated as Truth and Reality
1936).
Freud discouraged young Rank from pursuing a medical career. After 1912 Freud
always addressed the new Ph.D as “Dr. Rank” and eventually referred patients to
him. This was consistent with his support of non-medical or “lay” analysis.
Freud and Rank agreed on another controversial issue: the eligibility of
homosexual candidates for analytic training. Rank served in the Austrian army in
Poland during World War I, where he met and married Beata “Tola” Mincer in 1918;
she became a noted lay analyst and practiced in Boston after their separation in
1934. The birth of their only child, Helene (1919) enhanced Rank’s interest in
the pre-Oedipal phase of development (birth to age 3) and the mother-child
relationship, which in Freud’s theory was mainly taken up with the Oedipus
complex. Rank’s companion in the last four years of his life was Estelle Buel,
an American of Swiss descent whom he married just three months before his death.
Rank had applied for U.S. citizenship when a kidney infection led to fatal
septicemia; he died in New York City at 55.
Freud and Rank established the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag in
1919, which became Rank’s major responsibility along with training
psychoanalytic candidates from around the world. In 1924 Rank published Das
Trauma der Geburt, emphasizing the importance of separation and individuation,
with their attendant and inevitable anxiety in the pre-Oedipal period. Until
then psychoanalysis had been father-centered. Rank meant only to balance and
extend Freud’s work but this book, and his work with Ferenczi on active therapy
- Entzwicklungsziele der Psychoanalyse (1924) – led to a final break with his
mentor. In 1924 Rank turned 40 and visited the United States for the first time
where he was received and honored as Freud’s emissary, although his ideas had
begun to challenge Freudian doctrine.
Over the next decade Rank lectured, taught, wrote, and practiced a briefer form
of psychoanalytic therapy with a more egalitarian relationship between therapist
and patient. Rank modified the open-ended analytic process by using termination
as the focus for separation and independent development. In this respect his
work anticipated the innovations of Franz Alexander (brief analytic therapy, and
the corrective emotional experience).
Orthodox Freudians condemned Rank as a deviant. The American Psychoanalytic
Association expelled him and required his former analysands to undergo
re-analysis. Although Rank suffered from poor physical health and occasional
depression, assertions that his departure from the psychoanalytic fold were a
result of mental instability (by E. Jones and A. A. Brill) are not supportable.
The work of Rank and his colleague, Ferenczi, is being studied and discussed
more objectively by psychoanalytic scholars today.
Rank’s creativity continued to flourish in his post-Freudian period. Between
1926 and 1931 he wrote major works on developmental psychology and therapeutic
technique which are considered a forerunner of object relations theory and ego
psychology (Rudnytsky, 1991). He emphasized conscious experience, the present,
choice, responsibility, and action in contrast with the (classical Freudian)
unconscious, past history, drives, determinism, and intellectual insight.
Seelenglaube und Psychologie (1930) [Psychology and the Soul, 1998], Art and
Artist and Modern Education (1932) are works of social psychology and cultural
history addressing psychology and religion, creativity, and education,
respectively.
Otto Rank’s emphasis on will, relationship and creativity appealed to
psychologists Rollo May, Carl Rogers, Esther Menaker, Paul Goodman, and Henry
Murray. Noted psychiatrists influenced by Rank include Frederick Allen, Marion
Kenworthy, Robert Jay Lifton, Carl Whitaker, and Irvin ; writers and
critics include Ernest Becker, Maxwell Geismar, Max Lerner, Ludwig Lewisohn,
Anais Nin, Carl Rakosi, and Miriam Waddington.
Some of Rank’s ideas which seemed radical in his time are now in the mainstream
of psychoanalytic thought: the importance of the early mother-child
relationship; the ego, consciousness, the here-and-now, and the actual
relationship – as opposed to transference – in therapy. He anticipated and
influenced interpersonal, existential, client-centered, Gestalt, and
relationship therapies. As social psychologist he contributed to our
understanding of myth, religion, art, education, ethics, and organizational
behavior.
The Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, holds the Otto Rank papers in
its rare book and manuscript collections. The Journal of the Otto Rank
Association appeared twice annually from 1966-1983, publishing works by Rank and
many others who knew him and/or his writings. A collection of his American
lectures (1924-1938) has been published as A Psychology of Difference (Robert
Kramer, ed., 1996).
E. J. Lieberman
Bib: Lieberman, E.J., 1985/1993; Menaker, E., 1982; Rudnytsky, P., 1991; Taft
J., 1958; Zottl, A., 1982.
Lieberman E. James (1985), Acts of Will: the Life and Work of Otto Rank, New
York, Free Press, 517 p. French tr. (1991), La volonté en acte: La vie et l’œvre
d’Otto Rank, Paris, PUF, 531 pp. German tr. (1997), Otto Rank: Leben und Werk,
Giessen, PsychoSocial Verlag.
Menaker Esther (1982), Otto Rank: A Rediscovered Legacy, New York, Columbia
University Press, 190 p.
Rudnytsky Peter (1991), The Psychoanalytic Vocation: The Legacy of Otto Rank and
Donald , New Haven, Yale University Press, 245 p.
Taft Jessie (1958), Otto Rank, New York, Julian, 299 p.
Zottl Anton (1982), Otto Rank: Das Lebenswerk eines Dissidenten der
Psychoanalyse, München, Kindler Verlag, 316 p.
1884 b. Vienna, Austria, 22 April
4月22日出生于奥地利维也纳
1905 At 21 sends ms. of The Artist to Sigmund Freud, 49, whose work he had
studied
21岁
1906 Becomes secretary of the fledgling Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, goes back
to Gymnasium(academic high school) with Freud’s financial help.
1907 Der Kunstler/ The Artist a small monograph subtitled “An Approach to a
Sexual Psychology.” The first psychoanalytic book by a disciple of Freud.
