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In this philosophical study of the belief in a soul, Rank has focused his attention upon the origin, development, and essence of the soul concept in psychology. In his introductory chapter he contrasts and compares different aspects of self understanding and human understanding, discusses the resistances against self understanding, knowledge projection mechanisms, and the dualistic phases of psychology, and describes in brief the history of psychology as a belief in the soul.
The relationship between soul belief and religion is then approached in the light of the phenomena exposed by totemism, the riddle of natural death, the blood guilt conceptions, and their superego denials, the concept of animal souls, and by the meaning of sexual symbols. Christianity is interpreted, as a “son” religion, with the mother as soul bearer and God as the symbol of the immortal soul in accordance with the attitude of psychoanalytic findings in ego and sex psychology.
Rank describes a certain cultural period as the “sexual period” in which the rǒle of sexuality in soul concepts came into the foreground, culminating in a world building with religious mysticism and cosmic sexual myths. In this section of the book he also deals with the mechanisms in force, and with the psychological importance of sexuality as an