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According to the foreword, this work was intended to be Otto Rank's last. He did not live to complete the final chapter. The book grew out of 'the appreciation of the influence ideologies exert
upon human behavior in determining the destinies of people'. The author's Seelenglaube und Psychologie, published in 1930, offers a background for the present work. In that publication the thesis is elaborated that individual psychology is shaped and determined not by 'blind biological impulses' but by powerful collective ideologies 'which originated beyond the individual and did not spring from an understanding of the self'. By ideologies 'beyond the individual', the author does not mean collective or social psychology, but 'the irrational basis of human nature which lies beyond any psychology, individual or collective'. The book enters a plea for the recognition and acceptance of this irrational element as the most vital part of human emotional life.
In the opening chapter, Psychology and Social Change, it is stated that a dilemma is presented by the question whether a change in people or a change in systems of living offers a better method for improving human conditions. The system of education in a society is dependent upon which of these changes the emphasis is placed on. Progressive educators have made the individual's capacity to change the primary goal of present day education. Of late, under threat of foreign ideologies, educators have had to 're-define the ideal of individualism'. The emphasis had to be shifted toward a fostering of democratic values and away from those of the 'child-centered' school. The democratic society tries to change people so that they may achieve a better life within the social system; the totalitarian state tries to adjust people to a change of the system itself with the promise of ultimate advantage to the individual. The first principle is called evolutionary, the second revolutionary.
The author reviews what he calls 'the rap