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“Will people ever learn that there is no other equality possible than the right of every individual to become and to be himself, which actually means to accept his own difference, and have it accepted by others?”
This scholarly and timely book offers the reader an introduction to the creative legacy of Otto Rank and his contribution to the development of the existential-humanistic focus in psychotherapy. The author, Dr. Robert Kramer, has written and edited several books on Rank and on existential-humanistic applications to psychotherapy and leadership. A visiting professor of Public Leadership at Cornivus University of Budapest, he currently holds a
PhD in Leadership from the George Washington University School of Business and Public Management in Washington D.C. with a specialization in the intellectual history of psychoanalysis. He has taught at numerous universities across the globe, consulted to multiple organizations around the world, and held several senior U.S. government positions. His unique blending of the systemic and the individualistic aspects of human experience makes this book a particularly valuable contribution for our time.
Dr. Kramer holds that Rank, through his writings and lectures, lays the groundwork for our current relational and more socially conscious methods of psychotherapy. Kramer demonstrates how Rank contributes to the existential and humanistic branches of theory and leads the profession into a more client-centered and co-creative therapeutic process. We are taken through the historical pace of Rank’s thinking as he integrates his psychoanalytic beginnings with the subsequent shifts toward mutuality and the “here and now” nature of the therapeutic interaction. Rank moves away from drive theory and the privileging of the analysts’ interpretations to the co-creative process of the relationship with a goal toward the patient’s independence and confidence to create.
Rank places emphasis on affirmation over pa