By Gregory Mitchell
Otto 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. The topics he covered include separation and individuation, projection and identification, love and will, relationship therapy, and neurosis as a failure in creativity. Reading his books today reveals that Rank, who came to be much maligned by the orthodox psychoanalysts of his era, invented the modern approach to psychotherapy in the 1920s.
Once the favored follower of Sigmund Freud, Rank eventually became one of his mentor's sharpest critics. Rank was Freud's closest disciple and colleague from 1906-1926, the formative years of the psychoanalytic movement. He worked as Secretary of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and became a leader in the psychological revolution that changed our understanding of human personality and consciousness.
However, Otto Rank broke away from orthodox psychoanalysis at age 40, about the time he first visited America. Returning from New York in 1924, Rank faced criticism from the Freudians for his less authoritarian approach to psychotherapy, focused on the here-and-now, real relationships, and conscious determinism - rather than the client's past history, the transference relationship, and the affects of the unconscious mind.
Rank discusses the ultimates - psychological concepts which go beyond the individual's makeup - such as fear of death, desire for immortality, sexuality, and the need for love. He speaks often of Man's fears and irrationalities, but he does not try to exorcise or explain them away; rather he accepts them both as integral parts of the fabric of the human condition. Unlike many other intellectuals of the twentieth century, Rank maintains a place for the soul rather than dismissing it as a fantasy. The soul and the beliefs about it, he argues, set forth the foundation for psychology, with its complex analyzes of consciousness, self-consciousness, and personality.
The basic orientation of Otto Rank can be stated very explicitly. Rank rejected the key concept of the Oedipal situation as the source of psycho-pathology and adopted the birth experience as the origin of the essential trauma. He conceptualized that during the intrauterine experience the child experienced total union, which forever continued as the key motivation in a person's search for total fulfillment. He continues to long for this state, even as he experiences partial union in each relationship, and it is also anticipated in the hoped-for ultimate union after death. The birth experience terminated the original state of bliss and thus became such a traumatic experience that it became the origin of all anxiety, due to the fear of separation.
A second distinguishing feature of Rank's approach is the emphasis that he placed on educating the will. He called the will, "A positive guiding organization and integration of the self, which utilizes creativity as well as inhibits and controls the instinctual drives." By this he meant that man was not a victim of his instinctual impulses, but rather he was capable of directing these forces, either negatively for his own destruction or else he could organize them positively for creative self-expression and growth.
This leads to Rank's concept of creativity. For him the essential struggle of Man was not to achieve health or normalcy but rather to express himself creatively, so as to discover and express his own uniqueness and distinctiveness. Personal growth therefore becomes the process of taking responsibility for one's own life and to express one's will creatively in life situations. To achieve this an individual needs to face his own guilt and fear, which has resulted in a negative pattern of behavior, and break loose from this pattern and risk the courage to create.
At this moment the individual returns to the initial birth trauma, since every act of creativity is a rebirth process. He must relive the separation experience in every creative act. But now, instead of wishing for safety and union, he realizes that he must believe in himself as a self-reliant individual, different and differentiated from others, even at the possible price of being rejected by others.
One of the most outstanding proclamations of Otto Rank was his absolute belief in the uniqueness of every human being. The most quoted statement of his says it precisely: "Will people ever learn... that there is no other equality possible than the equal right of every individual to become and be himself, which actually means to accept his own difference and have it accepted by others."
Gregory Mitchell developed the Mind Development courses to help individuals develop and express their uniqueness.
In Mind Development we are aiming to achieve a transition from freedom within a bounded reality to freedom within an unbounded reality.
The Mind Development Courses:
1. Super Vision (develop sensory intelligence) - Available Now!
Home-study course to improve the mind's capacity for perception and integration between left and right brain, boosting memory, creativity, natural eyesight and drawing ability.
2. Effective Communication (communication skills course) - Available Now!
Learn powerful communication skills that enable you to be more effective at work and in those situations of everyday life where better communication can make all the difference.
3. Concentration: Developing Willpower (concentration course) - Available Now!
If you are concentrating you are awake and aware - your mental life is both intensified and broadened. Are there ways to improve your concentration directly? Yes, and this course teaches the best of them.
4. Super Student (study skills course) - Available Now!
Learn how to study a subject with maximum comprehension, recall and ability to apply what you have learned effectively.
5. Power Reading (effective reading course) - Available Now!
Learn how to read both quickly and in depth over a wide range of subjects, and then to be able to appreciate, analyze and apply what you have read with clear and incisive intelligence.
Basic Courses CD (top value compilation) - Available Now!
The Mind Development courses 1-5 are available as a special package, delivered to your door on CD. Also including the New Life Course and the contents of the Tools for Transformation 2-CD set, this package costs just $150 and saves you $130.
This is the recommended sequence in which to do the courses, though if you have a special interest, each course can be done independently.
The following supplementary course will interest those who are active in sports...
Zen & the Art of Sprinting (only US$ 9.00). This short course demonstrates the amazing changes in mental and physical capacity that can be created by effective practical mind development techniques, and illustrates how closely mind and body function in coordination. Read Students' Testimonials
