Books
As yet there is no complete published bibliography of Otto Rank. The Grinstein Index of Psychoanalytic Writings has his early works, including books and articles, but not the later ones. A chronological list of major works with information on editions and translations is found in Acts of Will: The Life and Work of Otto Rank by E. James Lieberman (1985/1993), 450-453. Additionally, A Psychology of Difference: The American Lectures by Otto Rank, Robert Kramer, ed. (1996), provides a splendid, accessible compilation of Rank’s lectures in English, based on his post-Freudian books. See also the bibliographic chart on this website following the biography.
Art and Artist and Truth and Reality are in print in paperback (Norton). Myth of the Birth of the Hero (2nd ed., 1922/2004), and Psychology and the Soul (1930/1998) are in print as is The Incest Theme (1st. ed., 1912/1992) all from Johns Hopkins University Press. Rank wrote his last book in English; in print for a long time (Dover), Beyond Psychology is not hard to find used.
Will Therapy is a scarce book now, as is Modern Education. Chapters from both these books were reprinted in the paperback anthology edited by Philip Fruend, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero (1958), now out of print but easier to find. A quote from “Life Fear and Death Fear” (WT):
“The neurotic then is a man whom extreme fear keeps from accepting this payment [death] as a basis of life, and who accordingly seeks in his own way to buy himself free from his guilt. He does this through a constant restriction of life (restraint through fear); that is, he refuses the loan (life) in order thus to escape the payment of the debt (death). …. [This] has not so much the intention of granting him life, as of escaping death, from which he seeks to buy himself free by daily partial self-destruction …. as long as he punishes himself, feels pain as it were, he still lives … [this shows neurosis to be] an individual attempt at healing, against the arch enemy of mankind, the death fear, which can no longer be cured by the collective method [e.g., religion] of earlier ages.”
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A remarkable new book, Explorations of the Psychoanalytic Mystics by Dan Merkur (2010) includes a fine chapter on Rank with many further mentions in chapters on Erich Fromm, Esther Milner & Anton Ehrenzweig, D.W. Winnicott, Heinz Kohut, Hans Loewald, Neville Symington and Michael Eigen. Merkur offers many insights on Freud as well. Too few psychoanalysts are interested in the history of their profession, or in comparing creative thinkers outside the field with established icons inside. Merkur, who practices psychoanalysis in Toronto, also teaches and writes on the history of religion.