A Psychology of Difference

A leading disciple and confidant of Freud, Otto Rank revolutionized the field of psychoanalytic theory in The Trauma of Birth (1924). In this book, Rank proposed that the child's pre-Oedipal relationship to the mother was the prototype of the therapeutic relationship between analyst and patient. Although Rank is now widely acknowledged as the most important precursor of humanistic and existential psychotherapy--influencing such well-known writers as Carl Rogers, Rollo May, and Ernest Becker--Ran