| Abstract: | Otto Rank (1884–1939) wrote the present work at the height of his creative powers, betweenWill Therapy andArt and Artist. Here he presents a sweeping history of psychology—individual and social—from the animistic era to psychoanalysis. An earlier
translation (by William D. Turner, 1950) was incomplete and somewhat inaccurate. Unlike Sigmund Freud, his mentor, Rank viewed
religion with respect and clarifies its role in individual and communal life through this study of soul-belief through the
ages. The book contains important insights on immortality, will, dreams, Judaism and Christianity, Hamlet and Don Juan, Jung
and Adler, and Freud himself.
(Translated by Gregory C. Richter and E. James Lieberman)
Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Division of Language and Literature, Truman State University, Kirksville, Missouri. He
translated Otto Rank'sThe Incest Theme in Literature and Legend (1912), Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. E. James Lieberman, M.D., author ofActs of Will: The Life and Work of Otto Rank (1985), is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, George Washington University School of Medicine. This excert from the book of
the same title by Otto Rank is printed with the permission of the publisher, The Johns Hopkins University Press, for which
we are grateful. |
