Otto Rank: On the Nature of the Hero

The mythological hero is a central psychological symbol in the work of Otto Rank. Rank's entire psychology is replete with references to the hero, although Rank's interpretation of that symbol changed and broadened as he developed and refined his notion of human nature. This paper will explore Rank's understanding of the hero in general, with a specific emphasis on King Oedipus; for the evolution of Rank's ideas about Oedipus sharply reflects the evolution of his philosophy of what it is to be human. Rank initially appeared to concur with Freud's instinct theory of Oedipus and the Oedipus complex, wherein the hero illustrates the base drives to which all human beings are thrall. But later Rank developed his own theory of the human will, which, in great contrast to Freud, explains a hero like Oedipus as the embodiment of the individual struggle for independence and personal will expression. Freud located in Oedipus an actual, endemic human compulsion toward social destruction; Rank came to see in that same hero the compulsion or necessity of individual human growth and creativity.

In The Myth of the Birth of the Hero , published early in his career, a few years after his initiation into the Vienna Circle, Rank presents his analysis of numerous myths and their heroes, and his thesis that the myths expound universal human themes. He believes that to comprehend the formation of myths “requires our going back to their ultimate source, namely the individual faculty of imagination” (p. 66), and attributes the myths to “artistic creativeness” (p. 9). He abstains from speculation as to whether the myths were imposed upon mankind by a supra-natural agency (as postulated by religious doctrine, for example). Rank emphasizes instead that, whatever their origin, the hero myths have endured over centuries not because