OTTO RANK AND THE TRAUMA OF BIRTH. INSTANCES AND CONCEPTS
OTTO RANK AND THE TRAUMA OF BIRTH. INSTANCES AND CONCEPTS

Summary/Abstract: Otto Rank was a close collaborator of Freud and the author of one of the most underrated theories: the trauma of birth. Rank first published “Das Trauma der Geburt” in 1924. The variant consulted for this study is the 1929 English translation, with an introduction by Rank's biographer E. James Lieberman. In his book, Rank argues that the trauma of birth is the original human trauma and that all anxiety that one encounters in life is due to the primal repression. Along the book, Rank offers valuable insights into different fields: infantile anxiety, sexual gratification, religious sublimation, artistic idealization or philosophic speculation. Due to the richness of ideas expressed, “The Trauma of Birth” by Otto Rank remains, as Lieberman states in Introduction “one of the most remarkable books in the history of psychology.”

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