You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The Letters of Sigmund Freud & Otto Rank: Inside Psychoanalysis, by E. James Lieberman and Robert Kramer, consists largely of Otto Rank's letters to Sigmund Freud. Far fewer of Freud's letters to Rank have survived: only about a quarter of the 250 letters are from Freud, and of those, a third are consigned to the appendix “Minor Letters.” Those letters are by and large quite uninteresting (“I am in possession of a registered letter addressed to you” reads one entire letter from Freud to Rank) (p. 293).
Despite the relatively modest number of letters compared to Freud's other correspondences-Freud and Ferenczi exchanged 1,240 letters-Rank was widely considered the closest to Freud of all of his disciples and, until his break with Freud, Rank was jealously viewed by Freud's other disciples as the acknowledged “favorite son” and “heir.”
The 30 or so letters “of medium and major importance” (p. x) from Freud are quite interesting, and help add detail to a portrait of the close relationship between Freud and Rank, as well as the differences between them that led ultimately to Rank's expulsion from Freud's inner circle. Additionally, the letters add depth to an understanding of the psychoanalytic movement in the years preceding WWI up to Rank's definitive departure in 1926.
Rather than being a simple collection of correspondence, which would in any case have resulted in a rather slim volume, the editors have elected to interleave these letters with a synopsis of the events that the particular letters refer to, or descriptions of events that were taking place during the time that the letters were written. The aim seems to have been to give a richer understanding of the significance of the letter's contents, and is generally a successful attempt. Having no letters from the years 1919 to 1921, the editors rely instead on other sources for their history of those years (p. 91).
In 1905, at age 21, Rank first met Freud, presenting him with a manuscript of an essay on The Artist. Fr