Otto Rank: biography of this Viennese psychoanalyst

A review of the life of Otto Rank, one of the most important disciples of Sigmund Freud.

Otto Rank's work on psychoanalysis was very extensive, highlighting his theory on birth trauma that has generated much controversy, both inside and outside psychoanalysis.

This Viennese psychoanalyst, disciple and friend of Sigmund Freud for about 20 years, was one of the main precursors of brief dynamic psychotherapy, framed within the current of psychoanalysis.

Below is a brief biography of Otto Rank a brief biography of Otto Rankwho is considered by many as the second most prolific psychoanalyst, after Freud himself, taking into account the historical and social context that Rank and his contemporaries lived between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.

Short biography of Otto Rank

Otto Rosenfeld, better known as Otto Rank, because he changed his surname due to disagreements with his father, was born in the city of Vienna (Austria) in 1884, in the bosom of a humble and hard-working family.He was born in Vienna (Austria) in 1884, into a humble and hard-working family.

In his youth, Rank began working as a mechanic while he combined it with reading and writing at night, two of his great passions.

His first major publication was a book known as "The Artist", framed within the psychoanalytic current, which came into the hands of Sigmund Freud, who was impressed when he read it and, for that reason, contacted Otto Rank to invite him to join the Wednesday Psychological Society, of which he would later be appointed secretary general.

By the age of 21 Rank had become a friend and disciple of Freud. and, following his advice, he rejected medical school to study at the university, being supported at all times by Freud, until he obtained a doctorate in philosophy.

There are sources that affirm that Rank became Freud's closest collaborator for 20 years and that he was one of the most relevant psychoanalysts who achieved the great achievements and also suffered the vicissitudes of the development of psychoanalysis.

After World War I

After the end of World War I, Otto Rank married and began to work as a psychoanalyst, combining his work as a psychotherapist with that of director of a publishing house known as "Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag" and also as co-editor, together with the psychoanalyst Ernest Jones, of the psychoanalytic journal "International Journal of Pycho-Analysis".

Rank's life was not without setbacks and his colleague, Ernest Jones, went so far as to claim that in the years following the end of World War I, Rank underwent a major change in his personality traits and that this was one of the main reasons why, in the 1920s, he began to break away from the traditional psychoanalysis that prevailed at the time, he began to separate himself from the traditional psychoanalysis that prevailed at the time..

It is at this time when he published "The Birth Trauma" (1923), based on an idea of Freud, characterized by the allegation of the fact that at birth the human being experiences for the first time the anguish, triggering the paradigm of this emotional state.

Rupture with Freud and his theories of psychoanalysis

After approximately 20 years as a friend and follower of Freud, both ended up separating their lives and following different paths in 1926.The same year Rank moved to live in Paris. This fact was promoted by the theory of birth trauma, which was interpreted in a way that detracted from the importance of the theory of the Oedipus complex developed by Freud. He gradually separated himself from the psychoanalytic movement, and was severely criticized by some of its staunchest members.

Once out of the psychoanalytic movement, Rank continued his work under the principles in which efficacy and common sense took precedence over the therapy itself, opposing those therapists who put the theory of their therapeutic model above its efficacy.

In 1936 he moved to New York, continuing his work as a therapist until his death in 1939, a few weeks after the death of his father.a few weeks after Freud's death.

Otto Rank's main theories

The psychoanalytic theory of Otto Rank presents, among its main ideas, that of the traumatic event, which he considers to be the birth and the anxiety it entails.which he considers to be the birth and the anxiety that this entails. This theory has generated much controversy over the years and is one of the reasons for Rank's separation 'in crescendo' from the central ideas of Freudian psychoanalytic theory, due to the fact that Rank's theory has downplayed the relevance of the oedipal conflicts of the human being.

Rank was one of the first psychologists to study attachment, highlighting the relationship of the mother with the child in the first years of life, which has repercussions on the child's later development. In relation to this, developed a theory on neurosis, based on the anguish of separation that human beings experience and that marks the rest of their lives..

Each person is seen on the basis of Rank's psychoanalytic theory as the creator of his or her own life, in the sense that they are seen as artists who have the capacity to develop the life they want, thus affirming their own individuality. A person with neurosis is referred to, according to Rank's theory, as an artiste manqué (lost artist).

The process of individuality entails separations and difficulties, defeating group resistances, and all this is accompanied by feelings of guilt and anxiety. Therefore, the psychoanalyst in this process will be in charge of facilitating the patient to be himself in the therapeutic sessions, so that he can come to accept his individuality with as little guilt and anguish as possible.

He explains the existentialism of people as a struggle between the predisposition to a struggle between the predisposition to be different from others and thus become a self-sufficient human being. and the need to be attached to one's family and community.

He uses the analogy of the womb to represent the family, the symbol of security in people's lives that breaks down when some of its members become independent.

Another of Rank's postulates was to vindicate the consciousness and the expression of the self, as opposed to the emphasis of Freud's psychoanalysis on the unconscious and repression, being more interested in the creativity and will of the human being than in instinct and desire.

His contributions to psychology and psychotherapy

There were several contributions that this tireless psychoanalyst developed throughout his life, highlighting those that are exposed in this section.

In the therapy that Rank developed, the main objective was to help patients to be reborn on a psychological level, in order for them to overcome their suffering. in order for them to overcome the trauma of their birth..

To achieve this psychic rebirth, the therapist seeks to connect emotionally with the patient and, after a psychotherapeutic process that takes place throughout the sessions, the process ends at the moment when the patient has been able to emerge in his or her own individuality, having emerged enriched and renewed after the experience, as well as having learned to cope with the trauma of separation.

One of Otto Rank's main postulates in psychotherapy, was his proposal of a therapeutic model based on the limitation in time of his process, that is to say, the promulgation of a less extensive therapy than those usually framed within psychoanalysis.. He imposed this time limitation in his therapeutic model in order to facilitate his patients' independence from the psychotherapist after the end of therapy, beginning to lay the foundations for the development of brief dynamic psychotherapy.

Rank also stood out for his various contributions to psychoanalysis applied to psychological therapy. He also did a great deal of work as a promoter of both the theory and practice of psychoanalysis.

Also was also a vindicator of the emotional experience on which psychological therapy should be based.. Considering in this way that many classical psychoanalysts treated their patients with detachment, so that the emotional experience of the patient is diminished and, in this way, the treatment is dehumanized.

He also considered it more important to focus during therapy on the present and, even more so, on the here and now, as opposed to other classical psychoanalytic therapies that focused more on the transferential interpretation of the patient's past, justifying that, by focusing on the past, the patient was evading in a defensive way what was experienced in the present moment..

Publications

Otto Rank developed a prolific work in all the fields in which he worked, including as a writer.The following works stand out.

In 1907 he concludes his book entitled "The Artist", which dealt with art, artists and psychoanalysis, allowing Rank to demonstrate a great knowledge of the psychoanalytic model.

"The Myth of the Birth of the Hero" is a work that Rank developed in 1909 and, three years later, he published "The Incest Motif in Poetry and Legend".

The one considered as the most relevant work of Otto Rank was the one he published in 1924 under the name of "The Birth Trauma", where he expounds his theory on 'The Birth Trauma'.in which he expounds his theory on 'primary anxiety', which explains the state of anxiety experienced by newborn babies when they are separated from their mother, after having been in her womb for 9 months. That same year he also published his work entitled "Don Juan".

In 1925, together with another psychoanalyst known as Sándor Ferenczi, he published a book entitled "Goals for the development of psychoanalysis" where they postulate a model of psychotherapy limited in time, in addition to two other ideas that will lay the foundations for the development of brief dynamic psychotherapy: the first is that the psychotherapist will develop a more active role in the therapy sessions in order to seek material from the unconscious side of the patient and the second is that he/she should be in charge of setting a deadline for the sessions so that they do not drag on indefinitely.

In addition to the book he published with Ferenczi that same year, he also published his work known as "The Double".

In the years that he was more separated from the psychoanalysis movement, he published works such as "Art and the Artist", in 1932; "Therapy of the Will", in 1936 and, finally, "Truth and Reality", published in 1936.