Otto Rank Quotes & Sayings

The new meaning of soul is creativity and mysticism. These will become the foundation of the new psychological type and with him or her will come the new civilization. — Otto Rank

Some refuse the loan of life to avoid the debt of death. — Otto Rank

In the psychical sphere there are no facts, but only interpretations of them. — Otto Rank

For the whole consequence of evolution from blind impulse through conscious will to self conscious knowledge, seems still somehow to correspond to a continued result of births, rebirths and new births, which reach from the birth of the child from the mother, beyond the birth of the individual from the mass, to the birth of the creative work from the individual and finally to the birth of knowledge from the work. — Otto Rank

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, for there are plenty of others. — Otto Rank

Art is life's dream interpretation. — Otto Rank

Every human being is ... equally unfree, that is, we ... create out of freedom, a prison ... — Otto Rank

Thou shalt not give birth reluctantly. — Otto Rank

The struggle of the artist against the art-ideology, against the creative impulse and even against his own work also shows itself in his attitude towards success and fame; these two phenomena are but an extension, socially, of the process which began subjectively with the vocation and creation of the personal ego to be an artist. In this entire creative process, which begins with self-nomination as artist and ends in the fame of posterity, two fundamental tendencies - one might almost say, two personalities of the individual - are in continual conflict throughout: one wants to eternalize itself in artistic creation, the other in ordinary life - in brief, immortal man vs. the immortal soul of man. — Otto Rank

For the only therapy is life. The patient must learn to live, to live with his split, his conflict, his ambivalence, which no therapy can take away, for if it could, it would take with it the actual spring of life. — Otto Rank

It seems that life, in order to maintain itself, must revolt every so often against man's ceaseless attempts to master its irrational forces with his mind. — Otto Rank

There is already too much truth in the world - an overproduction which apparently cannot be consumed! — Otto Rank

Man works primarily for his own self-respect and not for others or for profit ... the person who is working for the sake of his own satisfaction, the money he gets in return serves merely as fuel, that is, as a symbol of reward and recognition, in the last analysis, of acceptance by ones fellowmen. — Otto Rank

In the religious myths, the creative will appears personified in God, and man already feels himself guilty when he assumes himself to be like God, that is, to ascribe this will to himself. In the heroic myths on the contrary, man appears as himself, creative and guilt for his suffering and fall is ascribed to God, that is, to his own will. Both are only extreme reaction phenomena of man wavering between his Godlikeness and his nothingness, whose will is awakened to the knowledge of its power and whose consciousness is aroused to terror before it. — Otto Rank

The correct didactic analysis is one that does not in the least differ from the curative treatment. How, indeed, shall the future analyst learn the technique if he does not experience it just exactly as he is to apply it later? — Otto Rank