Otto Rank: biography of this Viennese psychoanalyst

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

This Viennese psychoanalyst, a 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.

We'll see now a short biography of Otto Rank, who is considered by many to be the second most prolific psychoanalyst, after Freud himself, taking into account the historical and social context that Rank and his contemporaries lived through between the end of the s. XIX and principles of the s. XX.

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Brief biography of Otto Rank

Otto Rosenfeld, better known as Otto Rank, because he changed his last name 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.

In his youth, Rank began working as a mechanic while combining 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 to the hands of Sigmund Freud, who was impressed upon reading it and, for that reason, he contacted Otto Rank to invite him to be part of the Wednesday Psychological Society, of which he would later end up being appointed as secretary. general.

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

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

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After the First World War

After the end of the First World War, Otto Rank married and began to practice his 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 that of 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 affirm that in the years after the completion of the First World War, Rank underwent a great change in his personality traits and that was one of the main reasons why, in the decade of the 20s, he began to separate from the traditional psychoanalysis that he prevailed at that time.

It is at this time that he publishes "The trauma of birth" (1923), starting from an idea of ​​Freud, characterized by the allegation the fact that at birth the human being experiences anxiety for the first time, unleashing the paradigm of this state emotional.

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Break with Freud and his theories of psychoanalysis

After about 20 years being a friend and follower of Freud, both ended up separating their lives and following different paths in 1926, same year in which Rank moves to live in Paris. This fact was promoted by the theory of birth trauma, which was interpreted in a way that downplayed the theory of the Oedipus complex developed by Freud. He gradually separated from the psychoanalytic movement, coming to be harshly criticized by some of its most staunch members.

Once out of the psychoanalytic movement, Rank continued his work under the principles in which he prioritized efficiency and common sense. above the therapy itself, opposing those therapists who put the theory of his therapeutic model above his efficacy.

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

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Otto Rank's main theories

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

Rank was one of the first psychologists who were in charge of studying attachment, highlighting the relationship of the mother with the child in the first years of life, affecting their later development. In relation to this, He developed a theory about neurosis, based on the anguish over the 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 their own life, in the sense that they are viewed as artists who have the ability to develop the life they want, thus affirming their own individuality. A person with neurosis is called, according to Rank's theory, as artiste manqué (lost artist).

The process of individuality entails separations and difficulties, defeating the resistance of the group 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, in order for him to be able to accept his individuality with the least guilt and anguish as possible.

He explains the existentialism of people as 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 his family and his community.

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

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

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 the trauma of their birth.

To achieve this psychic rebirth, the therapist seeks to connect emotionally with his patient and, after a psychotherapeutic process that goes taking place throughout the sessions, this process ends at the moment in which the patient has been able to emerge in his own individuality, having come out enriched and renewed after the experience, in addition to having learned to cope with the trauma of separation.

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

Rank also stood out for his various contributions to psychoanalysis applied to psychological therapy. He also developed a great job as a promoter, both of theory and practice, of psychoanalysis.

Too he was 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 decreases and, in this way, the treatment is dehumanizes.

In addition, she considered it more important to focus during therapy on the present and, even more, on the here and now, unlike other classical psychoanalytic therapies that focused more on the transference interpretation of the patient's past, justifying that, by focusing on the past, the patient defensively evades the experience in the present moment.

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Publications

Otto Rank developed a prolific work in all the fields in which he worked, including that of writer, where the works that are exposed below stand out.

In 1907 he concluded 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 Motive in Poetry and Legend."

The one considered as the most relevant work of Otto Rank was the one that he published in 1924 under the name of "The trauma of birth", where he exposes his theory on 'primary anxiety', which explains the state of anxiety experienced by newborn babies when they are separated from their mother, after being 9 months in her belly. That same year he also published his work titled “Don Juan”.

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

In addition to the book that 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 "The Art and the Artist", in 1932; "Therapy of the will", in the year 1936 and; finally, "Truth and reality", published in 1936.