| Otto Rank's most mature post-Freudian ideas are examined, focusing on Rank's critique of psychoanalysis, and putting it in a broad historical context. Rank's break from Freud is generally portrayed as disparaging to Rank, and Rank's post-Freudian ideas are considered incomprehensible and unscientific by traditional psychoanalytic scholars. Even authors more sympathetic to Rank see his early post-Freudian ideas as precursors to modern object relations theory, but see his later concepts as a decline in scientific rigor. In this study, an alternative interpretation is offered, which sees Rank's late ideas as strikingly similar to those of philosophical hermeneutics, as chiefly represented by Hans-Georg Gadamer. Viewed in this way, Rank can be seen as a harbinger of philosophical hermeneutics, which can serve as an alternative to the traditional natural science model invoked by psychoanalysis, psychology, and the human sciences.;The method used is an interpretive, hermeneutical approach, analyzing Rank's final and unfinished work, Beyond Psychology, a multidisciplinary examination of psychology, collective ideologies, and culture. Rank contends that the primordial belief is that of a soul. He traces the development of spiritual concepts of immortality, from primitive societies to modern Western civilization, and the rise and fall of the modern self. Science gained prominence over religion and philosophy, but denied the values it fostered, while claiming to be objective. Psychoanalysis began as therapy used to help certain people with emotional difficulties, but became a universal theory of the self that disguised the prevailing ideology of the day—that of the bourgeois personality, and the values it represents. Rank concluded that psychoanalysis, in both its theoretical and practical aspects, greatly distorts what actually occurs. These ideas are very similar to those of Hans-Georg Gadamer, who also argues that the human sciences misunderstand their own self-concept. In light of these findings about Rank's late concepts, his work in relation to Freud should be re-examined. By reminding researchers and therapists that they are representatives of the prevailing social order, Rank allows a conversation to take place among the advocates of opposing viewpoints. |
