Otto Rank
| Otto Rank | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
April 22, 1884 Vienna, Austria-Hungary |
| Died | October 31, 1939 (aged 55) New York City New York |
| Nationality | Austrian |
| Fields | Psychology |
| Institutions | University of Pennsylvania |
| Alma mater | University of Vienna |
| Influences | Sigmund Freud |
| Influenced | Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Sandor Ferenczi, Carl Rogers, Paul Goodman, Rollo May, Ernest Becker, Stanislav Grof, Matthew Fox, Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller |
Otto Rank (/rɑːŋk/; born Otto Rosenfeld; April 22, 1884 – October 31, 1939) was an Austrian psychoanalyst, writer, and teacher. Born in Vienna, 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 United States.
In 1905, at the age of 21, Otto Rank presented Freud with a short manuscript on the artist, a study that so impressed Freud he invited Rank to become Secretary of the emerging Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Rank thus became the first paid member of the psychoanalytic movement, and Freud's "right-hand man" for almost 20 years. Freud considered Rank, with whom he was more intimate intellectually than his own sons, to be the most brilliant of his Viennese disciples.
Encouraged and supported by Freud, Rank (who had attended a vocational high school), completed the "Gymnasium" or college-preparatory high school, attended the University of Vienna, and completed his PhD in 1912. His thesis, on the Lohengrin Saga, was published as a book in 1911, the first Freudian doctoral dissertation to be published as a book.
Rank was one of Freud's six collaborators brought together in a secret "committee" or "ring" to defend the psychoanalytic mainstream as disputes with Adler and then Jung developed. Rank was the most prolific author in the "ring" besides Freud himself, extending psychoanalytic theory to the study of legend, myth, art, and other works of creativity. He worked closely with Freud, contributing two chapters on myth and legend to later editions of The Interpretation of Dreams. Rank's name appeared underneath Freud's on the title page of Freud's greatest work from 1914 until 1930. Between 1915 and 1918, Rank served as Secretary of the International Psychoanalytical Association which Freud had founded in 1910. Everyone in the small psychoanalytic world understood how much Freud respected Rank and his prolific creativity in expanding psychoanalytic theory. Freud announced to the inner circle, full of jealous rivals, that Rank was "my heir" (Lieberman and Kramer, 2012, p. 225).
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