The Trauma of Birth

by Otto Rank

A protégé of Freud, Rank parted ways with his mentor over the controversial theory in this book—that the emotional disorder known as anxiety neurosis is caused by profound psychological trauma which occurs at birth. Thought-provoking coverage of infantile anxiety, sexual gratification, neurotic reproduction, religious sublimation, other topics.

Genres: Psychology, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Psychoanalysis

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1924

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

[Bilgehan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Doğum travmasından ilk bahseden Freud'dur. Rank tüm nevrozların, fantazilerin, cinsel kimliklerin, libidonun, yaşamın, ölümün kaynağının doğum travması olduğunu öne sürer. Öyle ki Rank'a göre doğum travmasından duyduğumuz kaygı olmasaydı yaşamazdık bile, doğduğumuz gibi ölürdük. Doğum travmasından kaynaklanan kaygı durumu bizi ana rahmine dönmekten, ya da ölmekten alıkoyar. Diğer tüm travmalar da doğum travmasını anımsattığı için travmatiktir. İnsana özgü tüm kaygı ve korku halleri, doğumu veya doğumdan önceki hali anımsattığı içindir. Misal çocuklar karanlıktan korkar çünkü karanlık çocuğa rahim içindeki durumu hatırlatır. Rank'a göre insan ancak doğum travmasını atlatırsa ölüm korkusunu yenebilir, çünkü bilinçdışının ölümden anladığı şey rahimdeki haldir, bu da dolayısıyla insana doğum travmasını hatırlatmaktadır.

[Ali Asghari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Controversial, however in my personal opinion, a master piece. Otto Rank addresses and remarks one of The two greatest episodes in our entire lifes, which are the moment you born, and the moment you die. Seems logical the fact that the experience of being protected, dependent and in harmony with all surrounding suffers a great 180 degrees spin the moment you born, and, as a blank paper, you start writting your own personal book of life... brilliant psychoanalytical work.

[Kaplumbağa Felsefecisi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Otto Rank, Freud tarafından yetenekleri fark edildiğinde ne üniversite eğitimi görmüş biri dahi değildi. Freud onu üniversiteye göndererek psikanaliz üzerine çalışmaya devam etmesini sağlamış. Bu süreç sonrası, Otto Rank, Freud’un psikanaliz kuramına karşı bir tez ortaya koyduğu bu kitabında, bahsi geçen doğum travması çocuk üzerinde Freud’un Oidipus Kompleksi tanımlı anne-baba faktörünün aslında doğumla başlayan travmadan daha önemsiz olduğunu dile getirir. Çocuk anne karnından dışarıya ilk adım attığı esnada yaşadığı korunmasızlık kaygısı, onun hayatındaki pek çok kaybın, ayrılığın, sonun kaygısının özü olduğunu dile getiriyor. Çocuk anneye bağlıysa, tam da bu doğum esnasında kopuşunun onarılmasını istediği ve bir an evvel anne karnına dönmek ( bu ölüm korkusu olarak görülür) isteğini getirdiğini anlatır. Babaya ve çevreye hatta aksi neticelerle anneye olan hırçınlık veya aşırı bağlanma yine doğum esnasında yaşadığı ve ömrü boyunca asla unutmayacağı bu travma ile açıklanıyor. Freud’a karşı durdurduğu,direkt antitez ürettiği sayfalar sonlarda ve bunu anlatırken pek çok düşünürün de referansını almış.

[ahmad afridi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rank starts his proposition with Freud saying that All anxiety goes back originally to anxiety at birth.. The dyspnea one has to face the moment he leaves the eternal abode is the primal anxiety we faced, during primary trauma, the expulsion from paradise (mothers' womb represents a place where there was enough food, warmth and above all it was secure). The child has to cry at this helplessness which helps deliver the elixir (oxygen) to sustain life on earth outside that protective home. This trauma is so severe that it impacts his whole life, it requires few early years of childhood to overcome this trauma, and unconsciously child still has that primal anxiety produced by events and surroundings which resemble the mother's womb.

With time he accepts his fall from paradise in early adulthood (via different repressive processes like heroisms, fantasizing death as a process of reunion to the lost paradise and other symbolisms in arts, politics ) and those who can't overcome this anxiety, during development, show the same symptoms of childhood anxiety as neurosis. In the rest of the chapters, he applied the psychoanalytic process to explain different phobias, arts, religions, and concepts of death, etc, in light of his theory of birth trauma.

[Musti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vorneweg:
Ich bin nicht wirklich versiert in Sachen Psychologie und Psychoanalyse, deswegen nur die Meinung eines Laien. Über einen möglichen historischen Wert dieses Werkes kann ich nichts sagen.


Kurz und knapp lässt sich sagen, dass Otto Rank in diesem Werk das Urtrauma der Geburt als Auslöser eigentlich aller Neurosen und Psychosen hinstellt (gemeinsam mit anderen Theorien wie z.B. dem Ödipuskomplex). Dies basiert auf der Vorarbeit von Sigmund Freud, welcher auch an einigen Stellen erwähnt wird. (Wie eigentlich in jedem Werk, das nur Ansatzweise mit der Psychoanalyse zu tun hat.) Der Autor geht darauf ein, inwiefern dieses Trauma und die damit verbundene Libido wieder in den Mutterleib zurückzukehren entsteht und wie sich dies auch ausdrücken kann. Einige Kapitel (ca. die Hälfte des Buchs) verbringt Rank damit zu erklären, wie sich dieses Verlangen auf Kunst, Religion, Mythen u.A. auswirkt. Hier wird sehr viel interpretiert. Also mehr als man es gewohnt ist von der Psychoanalyse, werden hier Symboliken teilweise so ausgelegt, dass alles in das Gesamtbild passt. Teilweise wirkt das leider forciert. Auch gesellschaftliche Phänomene werden in Nebensätzen mit Hilfe des Traumas der Geburt erklärt.
Alles in Allem gibt es einem eine neue Perspektive auf die Psyche und vermag sogar einige Problematiken tatsächlich erklären.

[Micah · Rating 4 out of 5]

What if the initial spark and kernel of the human psyche were anxiety? What if "Western" culture was predicated on a vast repression of the maternal-feminine? Can one be "re-born" in analysis, are all "higher" strivings based on a re-experience, denial, or reaction to the primal detachment of birth? Rank has a one-track mind but somehow his speculations are productive.

[Cangül · Rating 4 out of 5]

'kişi, hangi cinsten olursa olsun, kendine yakın birini yitirdiğinde, bu ayrılış yeniden ilksel ayrılışı, yani anneden ayrılmayı hatırlatır. acı verici bir çaba gerektiren libidoyu bu kişiden uzaklaştırma görevi ( freud yas tutmanın bu görevi yerine getirmeye yaradığı görüşündedir) ilksel travmanın ruhsal bir tekrarlanışına tekabül eder.'

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A key text in psychoanalysis. Especially if you are looking for the theoretical background of transpersonal psychology. Deals with the imprint the birth process has on the future psyche.

[Aslı Can]

Her şeyi ama her şeyi doğum anı travmasına bağlıyor tam anlamıyla. Bu kadar iddialı olunmaz ki. Freud'un öğrencisi olarak; boynuz-kulak.

[Uğur · Rating 5 out of 5]

He is one of the most valuable names Deciphered among Freud's students. I think that you have a very different place with Adler at the point of psychoanalysis. Because, apart from Freud and his students, who progressed based on the oedipal period, they went beyond the male-based period and became the owners of theories that care about the individual and feminine period.

In this book, Otto Rank has focused on the traumas that the individual has experienced in the womb during pregnancy and in the vagina during childbirth, rather than the oedipal period, and has searched for the source of the problems experienced in the future processes here. For example, he attributes disorders such as vertigo or panic attacks that occur during stress during adulthood to the traumatic process at birth. At this point, a philosophical problem is also making way for us; is a person's consciousness an empty plate when he is born? Or is consciousness and emotional perception experienced unconsciously? In response to the second question, Rank suggested that based on the unconscious formation, the baby experiences feelings such as pressure, stress, abandonment at that moment and carries it for life (through re-awareness in different ways). Taking birth as a basis by overcoming the oedipal period, Rank also made the transition from the masculine to the feminine, feeding Freudian psychoanalysis on the one hand and subverting the theory on the other. Rank, who parted ways with Freud at this point, was also excommunicated from the Church with this theory. Because what he is talking about is that neuroses create the mystical world, and psychoses create religious rules. After all, since he thought that neuroses and psychoses were also caused by birth traumas, it was his thesis that what the clergy were fictionalizing was actually nothing more than vaginal heaven-hell. Even when we listen to what the clergy are saying today, it will be possible to easily see a state of interest that goes up to many comments or even recipes about the age at which a girl's child will get married. It is also obvious that this is a vaginal paradise trauma. Just as with the fact that in the first hell narratives, space was equated with the mythos of seven floors below the ground, creating a perception of hell that was actually shaped by a male cleric's fantasy of vaginal depth ... The book has a very shocking effect from every point of view. I find it valuable to read by understanding. Although every book deserves it, some books deserve it more. Here is this book from those books... Enjoyable reading.

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Old Freudian-era psychology is so much fun - even if it has been "debunked" by supposedly superior minds in the past fifty years, and Rank is among the best of this group. The horror of being born is, in short, the primal trauma which triggers all the neuroses of adult life. Amen to that!

[Maria Wroblewski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting and thought provoking ideas; however,too much repetition makes it dull reading.

[Damla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tam olarak katılmasam da argüman bağlamında çok güzel dayanak oldu.
Herkesin okuması gereken kitaplardan biri bence

[Sheziss · Rating 3 out of 5]

A la gente obsesionada con lo perinatal le va a encantar esto.

[Deniz Çabuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bugünlerde okumuş olduğum Prof. Cengiz Güleç'in Freud isimli kitabında Otto Rank'dan şu şekilde bahsediyor: Çalışkan ve Nevrotik Oğul. Rank 'Doğum Travması' kuramıyla Psikanaliz de ki baba figürünün önemini yerinden ederek annenin önemini ortaya koymuştur. Nevrozların risk faktörünü bebeğin doğumunda oluşabilecek travmatik etmenlere bağlamıştır. Rank'ın 'travma' terimine çok önem vermesi ve baba figürünü sarsıcı radikal görüşüyle Freud'un tepkisini çekmekte gecikmiyor tabi ki. Bu şekil de yolları ayrı düşüyor Freud'la. Farkıyla ortaya koyduğu kuramı ilgi çekici olmakla birlikte Freud'un 'Odipal karmaşa' gibi Psikanaliz bilimi için önemi büyük olan teoriyi yok saymakta bence eksikliktir.

[Arjun Ravichandran · Rating 3 out of 5]

Psychoanalytic work that states that the trauma of birth is the foundation around which all of our human neuroses coalesce ; and that we spend the rest of our lives trying to get back to our original Eden, the blissful state of mother-child union.
The premise is suspect(psychoanalysts have this fatal flaw to explain everything in light of their 'grand explanation', and the author can't write very well. Nonetheless, there are some interesting points and the book makes you think.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

opposes Freud -- important for thinking about trauma outside of a repressive model

[Izra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Livre ayant pour théorie la psychanalyse, on n'échappe pas à toute la misogynie, le sexisme et l'homophobie (et hétérosexisme) qu'elle contient. Très pénible à lire.

[Mz · Rating 3 out of 5]

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