Otto Rank

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Lore & Background

Otto Rank was born Otto Rosenfeld in 1884 to an Austrian-Jewish artisan family in Vienna. He impressed Freud in 1905 with a study of the artist (published in 1907), which led to Rank's appointment as secretary of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and the movement's first salaried post. Encouraged by Freud, Rank earned a doctorate in literature from the University of Vienna in 1912, and published his thesis (on the Lohengrin saga) as the first Freudian dissertation issued as a book. He joined Freud's "Secret Committee" to defend psychoanalysis, served as managing director of the movement's publishing house, and helped edit Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse and Imago. A prolific writer and polymath, Rank extended psychoanalytic interpretation to legend, myth, and art, culminating in works such as The Myth of the Birth of the Hero and The Double. Rank published Das Trauma der Geburt in 1924, arguing that the emotional trauma of separation at birth is stored preverbally as a bodily memory and unconsciously shapes art, myth, religion, and philosophy. This primal trauma, argued Rank, is re-experienced during the separation phase of therapy. Shocking Freud, Rank's book proposed a pre-Oedipal stage, at the core of which was the powerful mother, challenging Freud's view that the Oedipus complex, at the core of which was the powerful father, is the nucleus of neurosis, religion and culture. Freud maintained that emotion is an expression of libido and likened analytic work to "the draining of the Zuyder Zee," whereas Rank asserted that Freud had confused sexuality and emotions. In Das Trauma der Geburt Rank was the first to see the powerful mother as the primal source of the super-ego, a role that Freud had reserved for the powerful father. Rank left Vienna in 1926 and divided his time between Paris and the United States, where he lectured, practiced psychotherapy, and continued to write on art, myth, and the will. At age 55, Rank took ill suddenly and died in New York City in October 1939, reportedly remarking "Komisch" (strange, amusing) on his deathbed.

Reader's Guide

Rank's significance lies in his break with Freudian orthodoxy and his lasting influence on psychotherapy and social work. His concept of birth trauma as a pre-Oedipal experience shifted focus from the father to the mother as the primal source of the super-ego, and his emphasis on the therapeutic relationship as a collaborative, here-and-now encounter laid groundwork for relational, humanistic, and existential therapies. Between 1920 and 1924 Rank collaborated with Sándor Ferenczi on approaches that favored immediacy and emotional reciprocity in the "here-and-now" of the consulting room. They warned that Freud's technical recommendations produced "an unnatural elimination of all human factors in the analysis." Rank's relationship-based will therapy transformed the therapeutic philosophy of Jessie Taft and Virginia Robinson, who introduced Rank's thought in the late 1920s at the Pennsylvania School of Social Work, creating the first strengths-based model of social work. Having learned of relationship-based will therapy from a graduate of the Penn School, Carl Rogers invited Rank to deliver a weekend workshop in 1936 at the Child Guidance Clinic in Rochester, New York. "I became infected with Rankian ideas," Rogers later said, and credited Rank's American lectures with shaping client-centered therapy. Rollo May described Rank as "the great unacknowledged genius in Freud's circle" in the foreword to Rank's American lectures. Rank's focus on the encounter also influenced Gestalt therapy, as Paul Goodman praised his post-Freudian ideas on art and creativity. Ernest Becker drew on Rank's dialectic of "life fear" and "death fear," which later inspired terror management theory experiments by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski. Several theorists consider Rank the first relational psychoanalyst.

Did You Know?

• Rank was born Otto Rosenfeld in 1884 to an Austrian-Jewish artisan family in Vienna.
• He impressed Freud in 1905 with a study of the artist, leading to his appointment as the psychoanalytic movement's first salaried post.
• Rank's 1924 book The Trauma of Birth coined the term 'pre-Oedipal' and proposed the powerful mother as the primal source of the super-ego.
• On his deathbed in New York City in October 1939, Rank reportedly remarked 'Komisch' (strange, amusing).
• Carl Rogers invited Rank to deliver a weekend workshop in 1936 after learning of his relationship-based will therapy, and later said 'I became infected with Rankian ideas.'