Art and Artist: Creative Urge and
Personality Development ((1989)) by
Otto Rank
That Angry?
[Ranks thought] has implications for the deepest and broadest
development of the social sciences . . . and of all [Ranks] books, Art and
Artist is the most secure monument to his genius. —Ernest Becker Along
with Adler and Jung, Otto Rank was one of the intellectual giants in the
inner circle around Sigmund Freud. Art and Artist, his major statement on
the relationship of art to the individual and society, pursues in a broader
cultural context Freuds ideas on art and neurosis and has had an
important influence on many twentieth-century writers and thinkers,
beginning with Henry Miller and Anais Nin. Art and Artist explores the
human urge to create in all its complex aspects, in terms not only of
individual works of art but of religion, mythology, and social institutions as
well. Based firmly on Ranks knowledge of psychology and psychoanalysis,
it ranges widely through anthropology and cultural history, reaching
beyond psychology to a broad understanding of human nature.

Personal Review: Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality
Development ((1989)) by Otto Rank
Beginning with a monograph in 1907 that first brought him to Freud's
attention, Otto Rank became his mentor's closest colleague until 1926.
The present work, published in 1932, follows three earlier elaborations of
the first monograph, and covers artistic endeavor, language, play,
architecture, etc. through the ages as an expression of a striving for
individual/communal immortality and a reconciliation with mortality. The
creative type lives life, affirming the inevitable, while the neurotic is frozen
with life-fear. A fine translation reads well but Ludwig Lewisohn's terrific
preface has been replaced here with one by the lighter-weight but better-
known Anais Nin. The book rewards study; see an excerpt on the Otto
Rank Website.
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