Otto Rank and the Creation of Modern Psychotherapy

Once considered Sigmund Freud’s designated heir, Otto Rank was an interdisciplinary thinker and prodigious author of twenty-two books. After being expelled from Freud’s inner circle in 1926--due to Freud’s 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. Rank’s ＂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 Yallom (Existential Psychology). A dazzling thinker, Rank influenced many artists and writers, including Samuel Beckett, Salvador Dalí, Anaïs 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 psychoanalyst’s theories have ever been tested with as much empirical rigor, and across so many different cultures, as those of Rank. This book translates Rank’s complex thought into language any reader can grasp easily.

Robert Kramer, PhD, is Visiting Professor of Public Leadership at Corvinus University of Budapest. He taught Rankian psychology and existential-humanistic psychotherapy at the Institute of Psychology at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest (2022-2023) and was Visiting Professor of Psychology at Corvinus University of Budapest (2017-2021). In 2016, he was the inaugural International Chair of Public Leadership at the National University of Public Service in Budapest. Previously he taught leadership and Rankian psychology at American University and George Washington University, both in Washington, DC.