Rank, Otto

Rank, Otto (ôt`ō rängk), 1884–1937, Austrian psychoanalyst; one of Sigmund Freud's first and most valued pupils. He early employed Freudian techniques to clarify the underlying significance of myths, producing the classic paper Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden (1909; tr. Myth of the Birth of the Hero, 1914). Rank, in collaboration with Hanns Sachs, founded the psychoanalytic journal Imago in 1912. Rank's theoretical views, diverging from those of Freud, gave the birth trauma, rather than the Oedipus complex, the central position in the causation of psychoneurosis, claiming all neurotic anxiety to be a repetition of the physiological phenomenon of birth. As a therapist, he attempted to reduce the time required for a successful psychoanalysis to a few months. Rank emigrated to the United States a few years before his death. Among his writings are The Trauma of Birth (tr. 1929), Art and Artist (tr. 1932), Modern Education (tr. 1932), and Will Therapy (tr. 1936).

Bibliography

See studies by E. Menaker (1982) and E. J. Lieberman (1983).

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Rank, Otto

 orig. Otto Rosenfeld

(born April 22, 1884, Vienna, Austria—died Oct. 31, 1939, New York, N.Y., U.S.) Austrian psychologist. A protégé of Sigmund Freud, Rank's early books, including The Artist (1907) and The Myth of the Birth of the Hero (1909), extended psychoanalytic theory to explain the significance of myths. He edited the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (1912–24). The publication of The Trauma of Birth (1924), which was seen to undermine the principles of psychoanalysis by arguing that the basis of anxiety neurosis is psychological trauma occurring during birth, led to his expulsion from the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Rank settled in New York City in 1936, and his later work focused on the will as the guiding force in personality development.