I imagine myself back in New York City in Summer 1928, ready to start a few weeks of therapy with Dr. Otto Rank.
Dr. Rank opens the door, smiles, and nods. His Austrian accent has a harsh German crunch, but his tone is gentle as he says, “ach, Mike Goodenow Weber, hullo, come in”.
He leads the way to his office, which is a library with tall bookcases and one large window overlooking the Hudson River. As he shows me a few of the books in his bookcase, he comes alive with exhilaration, fire, and joy. He gestures with his hands as he speaks and his face expresses the whole range of emotions. There’s nothing solemn or grave about him. And his vitality, interest, enthusiasm, and sense of adventure are contagious.
I lie down on the couch. He sits a little behind me, out of sight. Here are the highlights of my therapy sessions with Otto Rank:
Me: “What are we trying to do here?”
Rank: “Our sessions are all about your primal life force.”
Me: “You’re helping bring out my primal life force?”
Rank: “No, Mike. You are. In this therapy, you are the chief actor.”
Me: “You talk a lot about willing, Doctor Rank. The center of change is my own creative will?”
Rank: “Yes.”
Me: “And what’s wrong with my creative will?”
Rank: “You’ve not yet revealed that. Is it buried under and struggling to emerge from any guilt, anxiety, and inhibitions?”
Me: “Why don’t you just tell me what’s wrong with me?”
Rank: “You don’t need my interpretation of who you are, Mike. You need to discover your own creative will and learn how to express it.”
Me: “You think my creative will is blocked?”
Rank: “You can still open up more, and become the person you want to be but haven’t yet dared to be. I’m finding ways to convey to you my belief in your capacity to creatively structure and restructure your new self.”
Me: “So the goal of therapy is individuation?”
Rank: “Usually, Mike. To accept your own individuality, to affirm it, develop it, cultivate it. To rediscover your positive, creative will. To own your feelings and your willing. To liberate your capacities. To become your own autonomous person.”
Me: “So what are we correcting, Doctor Rank, what are we curing?”
Rank: “I’m not even looking for psychological disease in you.”
Me: “What are you doing, then?”
Rank: “I am affirming. We are affirming.”
Me: “Affirming my will?”
Rank: “You see, eh, Mike?”
Me: “So we’re curing my weak and shrunken will?”
Rank: “We are. Helping you break free from any ingrained patterns of evading your will.”
Me: “You are just helping me break free by affirming my will?”
Rank: “My task is to help you develop and grow by strengthening your will. Again, you must exercise your positive, creative will every day, without feeling guilty.”
Me: “You just want me to walk out of here and head back to my everyday life with a stronger will?”
Rank: “You are beginning to manifest a much stronger will. I commend you for your progress.”
Me: “Thank you, Doctor Rank. I think you’re right.”
Rank: “You’re more fully alive, Me. You’re feeling more of your own power. You’re experiencing life with more intent, more purpose.”
Me: “Asserting my will is never easy. It’s difficult.”
Rank: “But you’re listening to yourself much more respectfully and much more empathetically.”
Me: “I am. Why’s it so difficult for most of us?”
Rank: “Almost all of us let our willing get overburdened with guilt or we hide it in our denials, rationalizations, and justifications. And we fear individualization because we fear being alone, we fear a loss of relationship, we fear loneliness.”
Me: “I’ve had that too?”
Rank: “Of course. There was a deadlock in your personality. But you also are learning your power of willing and creating, including creating your new self.”
Me: “Well, wait a minute, Doctor Rank. Life isn’t all about me. This is very much about empathy and love, yes?”
Rank: “Love is important, but love is not sufficient. Totally immersing oneself in another person is not psychologically healthy. That comes at the expense of affirming what is unique about our new self. We develop through relationships, very much so, and even through some relationships in which we are dependent. But ultimately our individual autonomy and our social connectedness are complementary. We need to develop both to the maximum extent that we can.”
Me: “But you are focusing on my development of autonomy because you think that’s the side I need to develop more?”
Rank: “That’s the idea I have, Mike. I think it’s so. Isn’t it?”
Me: “Yes, yes, of course. Hmm. But I’m breaking free.”
Rank: “What you are doing is making real your individual, separate, different, independent being. You are making real your essential self.”
Me: “It’s kind of exciting, Doctor Rank.”
Rank: “Yes it is, Mike. You are trusting yourself to will. You no longer have to justify everything you’re willing. You’re not feeling guilty about what you’re willing. You have an outlook, your own outlook. your own moral and ethical standard and ideal. But you’re no longer subjecting your will in the process of attaining your ideal. Now you are creating yourself over in the image of your own ideal. Because you have faith in yourself. You are taking possession of something of extreme importance – more of your ideal self.”
Me: “It’s really happening, isn’t it? What’s next?”
Rank: “Keep forming and creating your new self. Take your new self into one situation of life after another. Respond to situations from your whole will and bring your intelligence and creativity to bear. Fear is the main problem, so keep overcoming your fear. Stop denying or blocking your ideal self. You are equal to each situation of your life. Know it. In each new situation, free your ideal self and all your creative powers to intend, act, and think.”
Me: “This is all about me and my will and my creativity, Doctor Rank?”
Rank: “No. It’s also about your capacity to love.”
Me: “You see a shortcoming in me?”
Rank: “Most men don’t love enough.”
Me: “True.”
Rank: “Do you want to be even more empathetic and loving, Mike?”
Me: “I do.”
Rank: “We fear love since it might involve losing. To accept love we must accept the pain that goes with it, and the risk of even more pain. When you accept people’s love do you feel guilty?”
Me: “Yes, Doctor Rank. I never thought about it that way before, but yes, other people’s love for me sometimes makes me feel guilty.”
Rank: “Every meeting of I and Thou is fleeting. These meetings remain elusive for us. But every time we surrender our lonely burden of difference, we can share in that empathy, love, and joy. And when we share in that, we share in the awesome splendor and bigness of the sacred life force of the cosmos, in the awesome splendor and bigness of Creation, in the All.”
Me: “Yes, I’ve experienced that. I’d like to experience it more often, with more people.”
Rank: “It’s best when that experience of empathy and love is mutual. When it’s shared in entirely in the heart of the other person. Then we each receive back our new self, renewed.”
Me: “Love is vital. I’ll seek it much more, be ready for it, accept it.”
Rank: “It’s perfectly all right to be different. And it’s perfectly all right to merge with another individual, to yield up our mortal ego and receive it back, even richer.”
Me: “Both experiences are beautiful. I, by myself. And I and Thou.”
Rank: “Precisely, Mike.”
Me: “Sounds like a dream, Doctor Rank.”
Rank: “It’s not. It’s also what makes life painful. Individuating our separate self makes us feel guilty, anxious. Immersing ourselves too much with other people makes us feel guilty and anxious.”
Me: “So we’re trapped?”
Rank: “No. Living involves both individuating and connecting. But we can get whipsawed from one pole to the other, from autonomy to union and back again. Balancing individuating and connecting is the essence of psychological health.”
Me: “Balancing our separate self and our intimately connected self is the essence of psychological health?”
Rank: “Yes, Mike. We reach psychological health when we live fully in both maximum individuation and maximum connectedness.”
Me: “It’s that simple, Doctor Rank?”
Rank: “Simple but difficult. The tension between individuation and connectedness is ever-present in life, to the end.”
Me: “But we can achieve balance?”
Rank: “Yes. There will always be tension between individuation and connectedness, but they do not need to be opposed. We can navigate the ebb and flow of these two currents. We can keep a harmony and a balance between autonomy and unity. In fact, creative living emerges out of solving, again and again, this challenge.”
Me: “Connected and free.”
Rank: “Every day, back and forth, connected and free.”
Me: “Individuality and relationship.”
Rank: “Every day, back and forth, individuality and relationship,”
Me: “Okay, Doctor Rank, I get it.”
Rank: “The insight is the easy part, Mike. Now you’ve got to live the insight.”
Me: “Give and take, surrender and assert, merge and individuate, unite and separate.”
Rank: “In the present. In the reality of the moment. In the here and now.”
Me: “How do I get there?”
Rank: “Accept yourself. Accept your will to individuate. And accept your will to merge.”
Me: “Accept the whole thing.”
Rank: “Yes, Mike. Strengthen your will when you need to individuate. Soften your will when you need to merge. But see that you are a whole person with one will. Fully own what you are willing.”
Me: “So everyone has this problem?”
Rank: “Yes. It’s universal. It’s the problem of existence. It’s the reality problem.”
Me: “So, Doctor Rank, why don’t we all just live this way?”
Rank: “Because it’s difficult. It’s difficult to take responsibility for your unique self. It’s difficult to unite with others in tenderness, compassion, and love. And it’s difficult because there’s no solution, once and for all. We wish for and fear separation. We wish for and fear union – merging into the other or into the collective. Separating is painful. Uniting is painful. Every day, throughout our life. But neither can be denied if we are to be a whole person. And no therapy can take away this tension.”
Me: “What can therapy do?”
Rank: “Help you open a space deep inside yourself, at the center of your being, where you can accept yourself – the part of your being that is different from others and the part of your being that unites with others in love. To live out the dance of creative will and loving connection.”
Me: “Sounds like a final statement, Doctor Rank.”
Rank: “Almost, Mike. Finally, become your own therapist.”
Carmen: “Makes sense.”
Rank: “I’ve been trying to bring to fruition your own auto-therapeutic forces. In the end, each client works out personal problems in his or her individual fashion. Each client can only become well in his or her own way, whenever and however the person wills it. I hope I’ve served as a midwife as you’ve given birth to your new self.”
Thank you very much, Francisco. As you can tell, I'm an enthusiastic proponent of Otto Rank. I'll be reading the essays of you and your colleagues on Prosocial Behavior more than once, as theirs a depth of meaning there, all backed up by research.
Mike your work is great. I was there with Dr. Rank in the therapy chair., "Individuality and relationship" what a wonderful insight! Right on. Keep these great essays coming. I am enjoying them as best of all are inspiring and prosocial. Thanks for a great breakfast read and time! Francisco