Talk:Otto Rank

The "Pre-Oedipal" story
"The Oedipus complex, Freud explained tirelessly, was the nucleus of the neurosis and the foundational source of all art, myth, religion, philosophy, therapy – indeed of all human culture and civilization. It was the first time that anyone in the inner circle had dared to suggest that the Oedipus complex might not be the supreme causal factor in psychoanalysis. It was also the first time that anyone in the inner circle had dared to suggest that there was a “pre-Oedipal” complex – a term that did not exist at that time. Rank was the first to use the term “pre-Oedipal” in a public psychoanalytic forum in 1925 (Rank, 1996, p. 43). In the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, Rank will be credited with coining this term, which is now mistakenly thought to have been introduced by Freud in 1932.

After some hesitation, Freud distanced himself from The Trauma of Birth, signalling to other members of his inner circle that Rank was perilously close to anti-Oedipal heresy. Confronted with Freud’s decisive opposition, Rank chose to resign in protest from his powerful positions as Vice-President of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, director of Freud’s publishing house, and co-editor of Imago and Zeitschrift. His closest friend, Sandor Ferenczi, with whom Rank collaborated in the early Twenties on new experiential, object-relational and "here-and-now" approaches to therapy, abandoned him. The break between Freud and Rank, and the loss of Rank's tremendous vitality, left a gaping hole in "the cause" that would never be filled by anyone else. Anna Freud replaced Rank on the secret "committee," but could not match his intellect, although Freud loved her dearly. Ferenczi became more and more alienated from Freud and died broken-hearted in 1933."

this is not objective ~zain

Very little in this article is!--99.33.27.189 (talk) 15:40, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree. What's worse there are no references and I don't know how to add them. The changes in the header and the mentioning of Karl Abraham needs a reference to the Freud/Abraham correspondence edited by Karl Falzeder and Ludger M. Hermanns (2009 German edition) —Preceding unsigned comment added by ArchosIDF (talk • contribs) 12:06, 9 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, this article needs work to be less subjective and more effectively referenced. I understand it is considered better, in Wikipedia style, to write in a boring way.  That needs work also.  There are impressive references at the end of the article but they need to be inserted appropriately in the article itself to support particular assertions.  Some of the statements about deceased people are rather slanderous.  Anne9853 (talk) 14:30, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Book titles
1. The article stated that in the year 1924 O.R. published the book "The trauma of birth".

That is an incorrect statement, and I resent it and the habit it illustrates. The title given is that of a later translation, and O.R. wrote in his OWN language. Experience shows that native speakers of English - more than anyone else in the world with comparable cultural background - cannot really imagine that there exist languages other than English, which to them simply is "THE" language (since it is the one their mother taught them, which is an extremely overwhelming proof...), or if they - rather reluctantly - acknowledge their existence, it is rather as some weird fringe phaenomena in this world (and better overcome and gone rather sooner than later...), that cannot really matter in any way...

There are two sides to the story: First, in general, all languages represent mental and cultural worlds, and you cannot ever really translate in an "one-to-one" manner from one into the other (at best you can achieve approximations). The more complex and interesting, and the more philosophical and aesthetic the contents and ideas expressed, the more difficult and hence the more thought-altering the process of translation will be. An original work, and a translation are two different things. It is that easy !

Second, a more formal point: texts are often revised at the time of or prior to translation, so at the latter date it does not necessarily have the same contents as the first time it was brought to the attention of the world. Plus titles get often altered, because a literal translation may sound awkward, or the publisher's taste may demand it, or whatever. So simply from a historian's matter-of-fact point of view, you may not confuse dates of publishing and titles of original and translated version. Just in case you are meaning to do a work of precision in this "Encyclopaedia"...

2. Another example proves my point above: Another work by Rank, apparently never translated, is listed in the table, and an attempt made to render its title into English. "Geisteswissenschaften" is rendered as "Mental sciences", which is a word-component-by-word-component translation. Branches of academic study are classified in different ways in different areas of Europe as the result of cultural history not being directed by any "centre". So "Geisteswissenschaften" is a term coined from Germanic word roots and meaning about the same thing as "humanities", which was taken over from the latin language. But not precisely the same. (And to complicate things, "social sciences" are sometimes subsumed under it, or sometimes elevated to a third category besides the study of "Geistes"- and "Natur"- phaenomena.) So there you are. No exact translation is possible, the one given will puzzle English readers, approximations with commentary would do best, but mean more work - as often... - So damn that fellow for not using English in the first place, as a proper human should do...!147.142.186.54 (talk) 15:11, 24 November 2007 (UTC)


 * So edit, correct, improve the article. That's the principle here. And BTW, also edit and correct the German Wikipedia: it gives "Das Trauma der Geburt und seine Bedeutung für die Psychoanalyse (1924). AllyD (talk) 19:48, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Article and section length
This article, particularly the sections In the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and Influence, is flatly and plainly too long, particularly the latter section. Or at the very least, those large blocks of text need to be broken down into subsections, for reasons primarily of cogency and readability. Bear in mind, I'm not criticizing the content itself.. more just its formatting. I'm reminded of trying to read page after page of a single paragraph in Dostoeyevsky. To qualify my whining, though, I'm hardly an expert in the area and don't feel qualified to remove blocks of text and reformat others.. it still needs to be done. Quotes can be consolidated and indented in addition to subsections.. The article also doesn't hurt for lack of references, but does for lack of wikilinks, at least in proportion to the volume of text.

Usually I wouldn't post a critical assessment in a page's discussion without making an edit myself but, I thought that, after I'd read everything, the quality of the writing, which compared to many other articles with large blocks of text in each section, had a surprising amount of, and degree of, references. Anyway, if someone who has some competency in the subject matter happens to read this and at least breaks the text into a few subsections for the two sections in question here listed at the start of my comment, they would be bumping the quality of the article as a whole up several notches. frankly, I was surprised the article size wasn't mentioned here on the talk page already. Well, that's my piece.. apologies on its length, heh. Mr0t1633 (talk) 23:31, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I must agree with Mr 0t1633 --this whole article is made of up too few, overly long sections. I am keen to read all of this potentially good information about Otto Rank and as above, I cannot fault the contents which may be great, but I was immediately struck by the bad layout. No criticism of the contents at all just to be clear, and I'm not even saying any of it should be deleted either, but please can some editor improve the formatting and this would be achieved by the suggestion above that whoever wrote this, or whoever edits this, please just put in a few more subheadings at least. This would make the article much more digestible for the average reader. --Thomas — Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.27.34.222 (talk) 04:47, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I thought that section was interesting and thorough. The Summary of Ideas section is way too long and reads like a poorly written term paper full of quotes that overlap and don't transition well. There is also a lot of boosterism in this article for derivative concepts in organizational training, etc. Influences resulting from Rank's pioneering insights should definitely be included, but with more balance and less repetition. It's understandable that defenders of his work might go overboard with flattering descriptions and excessive explanations. Nevertheless, editing is sorely needed. Martindo (talk) 00:11, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Was Rank really an existential therapist?
Should Rank really be classified as an existential therapist? I have always regarded him as a psychoanalyst, rather than an existential therapist. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 22:12, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

This is a good article
Apparently the people who worked on this article knew well their topic. It is not perfect, there is still margin for improvement, but it is decent. Unfortunately for other articles concerning Freud's work, their writers did not liked and did not know their subject. Beickus (talk) 23:03, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Citation Style
Hello. I rarely see parenthetical in text citations on Wikipedia Articles. Correct me if I am wrong, but apparently the policy is that in 2006 it was decided to try to accommodate both. But now I guess parenthetical has been deprecated so I'm not sure what this means. My personal preference is not parenthetical citations. But policy is to keep it as it is with the article. Yet, I'd be curious. I'm not good at Wikipedia so I'd love to hear your take. However, I'd be interested in seeing if we'd maybe have a hybrid or where we are at that. I think parenthetical citations have a lot of merits. I'm just curious where people are at. Thank you. 18:29, 25 October 2020 (UTC) Hockeydogpizzapup (talk) 18:30, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

My edit of In the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society
Greetings Wikipedians! I deleted the the phrase "a short manuscript on the artist" because it is unclear and confusing, raising questions such as: Which artist? Or was it about artists in general? or is it referring to his later-published work The Artist? Cordially, BuzzWeiser196 (talk) 11:27, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

The man Rank
It is odd that this otherwise excellent entry makes zero reference to Rank's private life. His childhood was miserable. He was extremely loyal to Freud during their first 20 years of friendship but consistently refused to undergo analysis. His break with Freud occurred together with a life-threatening episode of major depression, culminating on his way to the USA to the point that has made him return to Freud for an intensive analysis, after which he left for good. He himself has first ascribed his change of heart to a psychotic reaction to Freud's cancer. Neither is any reference to his marital life, his love affair with Anais Nin and his health in the USA. This is not mere gossip but an essential part of any biographic entry, especially of such a genius. Elitzur (talk) 07:08, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Early Life
This article is lacking any information on Rank's early life. This is obviously an important component of his later writings. Can someone more knowledgeable than I begin a section from birth to pre-Freud. Wigly Pigly (talk) 13:55, 14 September 2022 (UTC)