A Psychology of Difference: The American Lectures

by Otto Rank, Robert Kramer (Editor), Rollo May (Foreword by)

Overview

A leading disciple and confidant of Freud, Otto Rank revolutionized the field of psychoanalytic theory in The Trauma of Birth (1924). In this book, Rank proposed that the child's pre-Oedipal relationship to the mother was the prototype of the therapeutic relationship between analyst and patient. Although Rank is now widely acknowledged as the most important precursor of humanistic and existential psychotherapy--influencing such well-known writers as Carl Rogers, Rollo May, and Ernest Becker--Rank's knotty prose has long frustrated readers. In this volume of Rank's lectures, Robert Kramer has brought together for the first time the innovator's clearest explanations of his most influential theories.


The lectures were delivered in English to receptive audiences of social workers, therapists, and clinical psychologists throughout the United States from 1924 to 1938, the year before Rank's untimely death. The topics covered include separation and individuation, projection and identification, love and will, relationship therapy, and neurosis as a failure in creativity. The lectures reveal that Rank, much maligned by orthodox analysts, invented the modern object-relations approach to psychotherapy in the 1920s. In his introduction, based on private correspondence between Rank, Freud, and others in the inner circle, Robert Kramer tells the full story of why Rank parted ways with Freud. The collection of lectures constitutes a "readable Rank," filled with insights still relevant today, for those interested in the humanistic, existential, or object- relational aspects of psychotherapy, or in the development of the psychoanalytic movement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691216379
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/21/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	565 KB

About the Author

Otto Rank (1884-1939) was the author of many works, including Will Therapy, Truth and Reality, Art and Artist, and Beyond Psychology. He emigrated from Vienna to Paris in 1926, and moved permanently to the United States in 1935. Robert Kramer is the author of articles and reviews on organizational behavior and the history of psychoanalytic thought.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Chronology of Rank's Life (1884-1939)

Introduction. Insight and Blindness: Visions of Rank

Pt. 1 The Trauma of Birth: "A Much Stronger Repression Than Even Infantile Sexuality"

1 Psychoanalysis as General Psychology (1924)

2 The Therapeutic Application of Psychoanalysis (1924)

3 The Trauma of Birth and Its Importance for Psychoanalytic Therapy (1924)

4 Psychoanalysis as a Cultural Factor (1924)

Pt. 2 Exploring the Dark Continent of Maternal Power: "The 'Bad Mother' Freud Has Never Seen"

5 Foundations of a Genetic Psychology (1926)

6 Development of the Ego (1926)

7 The Problem of the Etiology of the Neurosis (1926)

8 The Anxiety Problem (1926)

9 The Genesis of the Guilt-Feeling (1926)

10 The Genesis of the Object Relation (1926)

Pt. 3 From Projection and Identification to Self-Determination: "Emotions Are the Center and Real Sphere of Psychology"

11 Love, Guilt, and the Denial of Feelings (1927)

12 Emotional Suffering and Therapy (1927)

13 The Significance of the Love Life (1927)

14 Social Adaptation and Creativity (1927)

15 The Prometheus Complex (1927)

16 Parental Attitudes and the Child's Reactions (1927)

Pt. 4 Toward a Theory of Relationship and Relativity: "I Am No Longer Trying to Prove Freud was Wrong and I Right"

17 Speech at First International Congress on Mental Hygiene (1930)

18 Beyond Psychoanalysis (1928)

19 The Yale Lecture (1929)

20 Neurosis as a Failure in Creativity (1935)

21 Active and Passive Therapy (1935)

22 Modern Psychology and Social Change (1938)

Prior Publication of Lectures

References

Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Decades ahead of his time. . . Rank explores in simple English the rich interplay between the I and the Thou, separation and union, the individual and the collective, will and love, creativity and guilt."—from the foreword by Rollo May

Rollo May

Decades ahead of his time. . . Rank explores in simple English the rich interplay between the I and the Thou, separation and union, the individual and the collective, will and love, creativity and guilt.

Recipe

"Decades ahead of his time. . . Rank explores in simple English the rich interplay between the I and the Thou, separation and union, the individual and the collective, will and love, creativity and guilt."—from the foreword by Rollo May

Editorial Reviews

"Dr. Kramer . . . is fast becoming one of the most productive and consistently insightful rnak scholars on the scene today. His major Rankian essays include treatments of Rank's place in the history of psychoanalysis, specific aspects of Rankian theory, Rank's influence on later major figures such as Carl Rogers, and the application of Rank's ideas to management theory."

The Ernest Becker Foundation

"Decades ahead of his time. . . Rank explores in simple English the rich interplay between the I and the Thou, separation and union, the individual and the collective, will and love, creativity and guilt."—from the foreword by Rollo May

From the Publisher