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Biography of Otto RankName: Otto RankBirth Date: April 22, 1884 Death Date: October 31, 1939 Place of Birth: Vienna, Austria Nationality: Austrian Gender: Male Occupations: psychotherapist Otto Rank The Austrian psychotherapist Otto Rank (1884-1939) taught and practiced a form of psychotherapy based upon his own trauma-of-birth theory and will therapy.Otto Rank was born in Vienna on April 22, 1884, into a disintegrating lower-middle-class Jewish family. His father is said to have been indifferent to the family and to have drunk. As a child, Otto found solace in the music of Richard Wagner. For intellectual nourishment he read Henrik Ibsen, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Then he discovered the early works of Sigmund Freud. They were a revelation.When Rank was 21 he met Freud, who persuaded him to attend the gymnasium and the University of Vienna and to study psychoanalysis. Freud read a manuscript which Rank had written; with the help of Freud's criticism, Rank rewrote it. The book, Der Künstler (1907; The Artist), was well received. He followed it with Der Mythus der Geburt des Heldens (1909; The Myth of …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…illusions, should help the patient to sustain them.Rank died in New York City on Oct. 31, 1939, five weeks after Freud had passed away in London. Further Reading A study of Rank's life is Jessie Taft, Otto Rank: A Biographical Study Based on Notebooks, Letters, Collected Writings, Therapeutic Achievements and Personal Associations (1958). Fay Berger Karpf, The Psychology and Psychotherapy of Otto Rank (1953), presents a three-part view of Rank: one section is devoted to his life and role in the psychoanalytic movement, one to the influences on his thought and work, and another to the essentials of his psychotherapy. An exposition of Rank's will therapy is the chapter "Rank's Will Psychology" in Lovell Langstroth, Structure of the Ego (1955).Lieberman, E. James, Acts of will: the life and work of Otto Rank: with a new preface, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993. Menaker, Esther, Otto Rank, a rediscovered legacy, New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. |