Otto Rank and the Creation of Modern Psychotherapy

Once considered Sigmund Freuds designated heir, Otto Rank was an interdisciplinary thinker and prodigious author of twenty-two books. After being expelled from Freuds inner circle in 1926-due to Freuds opposition to the pre-Oedipal thesis of The Trauma of Birth (1924)-Rank had a highly productive life as a teacher, psychotherapist, and writer. In this book, noted Rank scholar Robert Kramer argues that Rank, not Freud, created modern psychotherapy, which focuses on the therapist-client relationship. Ranks will therapy and his teaching on relationship and the creative will impacted not only modern psychotherapy but also social work and existential psychology. His influence can particularly be seen in the work of Carl Rogers (Psychotherapy), Jessie Taft and Virginia Robinson (Social Work), and Rollo May and Irvin Yalom (ExistentialPsychology). A dazzling thinker, Rank influenced many artists and writers, including Samuel Beckett, Salvador Dali, Ana?s Nin, Henry Miller, Betty Friedan, D. W. Winnicott, and, most significantly, Ernest Becker, Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Denial of Death (1973). Kramer argues that if the 20th century was the century of Freud, the 21st century is shaping up to be the century of Rank as no other psychoanalysts theories have ever been tested with as much empirical rigor, and across so many different cultures, as those of Rank. This book translates Ranks complex thought into language any reader can grasp easily.