Beyond Psychology

By Otto Rank

Book Overview

Psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, teacher, Otto Rank (1884-1939) wrote on such subjects as the artist, myth, the hero, sexuality, guilt, dreams, neurosis, and the technique and history of psychoanalysis. His ideas stimulated new lines of investigation not only in psychology but also in social science, religion, history, and anthropology. A pupil, colleague, and early follower of Freud (and later one of his chief dissenters), Rank settled in America in 1933 for a "sabbatical leave" devoted to therapy and teaching. Beyond Psychology was his first book in English, and it contains the results of a lifetime of thought and research about man's essential nature.
In Beyond Psychology Rank explores the ultimates of human existence -- the fear of death, the desire for immortality, the nature of sexuality, the basis of personality, the nature of social organization, the need for love, the meaning of creativity. He notes the failure of rational ideologies to cope with the instability in our social order, the lack of generally accepted ideals, the hostility, fear, and guilt that seem to characterize our civilization. Rank seeks to understand the basic human problems not by a rejection of irrationality but by an acceptance of it as an inevitable fact of human existence.
After a detailed critique of rational psychologies, he examines the myth of The Double in legend and literature in order to investigate the development of the ideal of the Soul, and he traces the reflection of man's fear of final destruction in social organizations, ideologies, concepts of personality, sexual roles, and religion. Among the subjects investigated in this searching analysis are kingship and magic participation, the institution of marriage, power and the state, Messianism, the doctrine of rebirth, the two kinds of love (Agape and Eros), the creation of the sexual self, feminine psychology and masculine ideology, and psychology beyond the self.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0007DFFV4
• ISBN13: 9780486204857
• Release Date: November 2011
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Best for the Last?

Rank's last book, the only one he wrote in English, was published two years after his untimely death in 1939. As his biographer (Acts of Will: The Life and Work of Otto Rank), I paid it too little heed, as some informants interviewed 25 years ago felt that because the book was not quite finished, it might have been altered in the process of getting it published. I now doubt that. Like other reviewers I find it slow going but rich, deep, sensitive, and brilliant. It requires and deserves re-reading. Unfortunately Dover has let it go out of print, but it seems to be readily available used. Only 1,000 of the hardback were printed; the paperback appeared around 1958 (several different covers were used). Another important Rank book first became available in a full English translation in 1998: Psychology and the Soul: A Study of the Origin, Conceptual Evolution, and Nature of the Soul.

Insightful and overwhelmingly eye-opening!

Rank is one of those psychologists/authors that addressed issues most others are too anxious to discuss, hence the reason, in my opinion, he is not as "popular" (in relative terms) as other psychologists. At times, tough to understand, but definitely worth the read!

Embracing the paradox ...

The odd thing with both Freud & Lacan is that, having promoted the notion of the unconscious in all its vicissitudes & unknowability, they then proceed to map & double-guess it. The result, in short, a 'rule-book' for the unconscious. Rank makes no such mistake ... he prods & weaves, essays & intuits, but never reduces the vagueries to maps, schemas or graphs ... on the contrary, Rank discerns & celebrates the paradoxical character of the godworm. He's not an easy read, but a necessary one.

Beyond Brilliant

Rank proves the truth of the thesis that a teacher has done his job when he becomes the student. This tour de force on Freudian psychological thought extends the bounds beyond anything that Freud, his teacher and mentor could have ever imagined himself. Every sentence is lucid and compelling. This book sparkles and speaks mostly to man's fears and irrationalities. But it does not try to exorcise or explan them away. For the first time a theory accepts them both as integral parts of the fabric of the human condition. The treatment of ideologies alone is worth the price of ten books, but there is more, a lot more: on creativity, social organization, human personality, etc. Ten stars!