A Psychology of Difference

by Otto Rank, Rollo May (Foreword), Robert Kramer (Editor)

A leading disciple and confidant of Freud, Otto Rank revolutionized the field of psychoanalytic theory in The Trauma of Birth (1924). In this book, Rank proposed that the child's pre-Oedipal relationship to the mother was the prototype of the therapeutic relationship between analyst and patient. Although Rank is now widely acknowledged as the most important precursor of humanistic and existential psychotherapy--influencing such well-known writers as Carl Rogers, Rollo May, and Ernest Becker--Rank's knotty prose has long frustrated readers. In this volume of Rank's lectures, Robert Kramer has brought together for the first time the innovator's clearest explanations of his most influential theories.


The lectures were delivered in English to receptive audiences of social workers, therapists, and clinical psychologists throughout the United States from 1924 to 1938, the year before Rank's untimely death. The topics covered include separation and individuation, projection and identification, love and will, relationship therapy, and neurosis as a failure in creativity. The lectures reveal that Rank, much maligned by orthodox analysts, invented the modern object-relations approach to psychotherapy in the 1920s. In his introduction, based on private correspondence between Rank, Freud, and others in the inner circle, Robert Kramer tells the full story of why Rank parted ways with Freud. The collection of lectures constitutes a "readable Rank," filled with insights still relevant today, for those interested in the humanistic, existential, or object- relational aspects of psychotherapy, or in the development of the psychoanalytic movement.

Genres: Psychology, Philosophy

320 pages, Hardcover

First published July 8, 1996

About the author

Born in Vienna as Otto Rosenfeld, he was one of Sigmund Freud's closest colleagues for 20 years, a prolific writer on psychoanalytic themes, an editor of the two most important analytic journals, managing director of Freud's publishing house and a creative theorist and therapist. In 1926, Otto Rank left Vienna for Paris. For the remaining 14 years of his life, Rank had a successful career as a lecturer, writer and therapist in France and the U.S..

Reviews

[EJames Lieberman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Otto Rank's ideas influenced many therapists and broke new ground in philosophy, art, education, and religion. Since his untimely death in 1939 his influence has grown through the work of Carl Rogers, Rollo May (who wrote the introduction), Ernest Becker, Anais Nin, Irvin Yalom, Esther Menaker, and John Bowlby.

With an excellent introduction by Robert Kramer, this book,brings together Rank's lectures to US audiences. The lectures are more readable than his densely written books. Some of the titles: "Development of the Ego," "Emotional Suffering and Therapy," "Social Adaptation and Creativity," "The Prometheus Complex," "Neurosis as a Failure in Creativity," and "Significance of the Love life." Kramer provides helpful reference and explanatory notes. This is a book for anyone interested in psychology, psychotherapy, child development, life-fear and death-fear, guilt, will, and freedom.