© Getty Images

Indifferent family life -

Otto Rank, born in 1884 in Vienna, was born into a low-income Jewish family. His family life was repressive, indifferent, and even, hopeless by many accounts. The picture depicts Vienna's Jewish Quarter in the 1880s. 

© Getty Images

Theater and the arts -

Rank’s fascination with theater and the arts led him to a vast intellectual world that he immersed himself in to escape the reality of his own family. Pictured is a drawing of Vienna's Hofburg Theater in 1889.

© Getty Images

The Artist -

In his early twenties, Rank penned a book titled ‘The Artist,’ a book which impressed Freud (pictured) so much that he took Rank under his wing, in many ways becoming the former’s “surrogate father.”

© Getty Images

Psychoanalytic theory related to the arts -

For two decades, Rank worked faithfully under Freud’s guidance, Rank regularly explored psychoanalytic theory as it related to artistic realms. Yet all came to a break in 1924.

© Getty Images

'The Trauma of Birth' -

Rank published ‘The Trauma of Birth,’ likely one of his best-known theories, in which he argues that much of an individual’s anxiety and suffering is rooted in the traumas experienced at birth.

© Getty Images

Rank's theory goes again Oedipus complex -

Initially, Freud supported Rank’s ideas on the matter but soon understood the argument went against his central theory of the Oedipus complex as the supreme and central causal factor of the human experience.

© Getty Images

Push back -

Rank tried to brand his theory as ‘pre-Oedipus,’ but he was met with a great deal of pushback from Freud and the larger Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, of which Rank was Secretary.

© Getty Images

Rank settles in the US -

Rank and Freud’s close working relationship was broken. Rank settled in the US to continue his critical psychiatric work, developing new theories and inspiring other thinkers, eventually giving light to a form of psychology dubbed the “Functional Approach.”

© Getty Images

Therapist to artists -

Carl Jung (pictured) was captivated by Rank’s work and theories. Rank also served as a therapist to artists like Henry Miller, among many others.

© Getty Images

Rationality -

In his seminal work, 'Beyond Psychology,' Rank made a critical argument on the role of rationality in human life.

© Getty Images

The most important part of life -

The text “pleads for the recognition and the acceptance of the irrational element as the most vital part of human life.”

© Getty Images

Coping with the inevitable -

For Rank, the individual’s inability to accept irrationality as a key factor of the “nature of life,” and the inability to creatively cope with certain inevitabilities, such as death, for example, is based on the human need and desire to seek control. Pictured is the illustration of 'Death' from Viridarium Chymicum by Daniel Stolcius, 1624.

© Getty Images

Impediment to growth -

This human need to control both individual and collective change through rationality is, what Rank argues, the primary impediment to the individual’s continued growth.

© Getty Images

Acutely aware of death -

For Rank, human rationality makes the individual acutely aware of their inevitable destiny: to eventually, at some point, perish.

© Getty Images

Quest for immortality -

The human’s awareness of their impending death creates a conflict with the inherent nature of life, in the sense that the awareness of death produces a desire for immortality.

© Getty Images

Search for relief -

Rank sees this urge for rationality appearing in the search for institutional relief, whether in the case of traditions, beliefs, or myths.

© Getty Images

Impulsivity -

Through a muddled sense of rationality, Rank also believed that the human behaves much more impulsively and on the basis of emotional reactivity.

© Getty Images

Creatures of reason -

It is only in retrospect that the human attempts to rationalize their own behavior and choices, reiterating our belief that we are “creatures of reason.”

© Getty Images

Live irrationally -

For Rank, the “irrational roots of human behavior” lie in how “people, though they may think and talk rationally – and even behave so – yet live irrationally.”

© Getty Images

Humans live in language -

Rank believes that this is because humans “live in language.” What does this mean? We are always attempting to explain our behavior and thoughts through rational frameworks.

© Getty Images

Creativity as a tool -

Relating back to his first book, ‘The Artist,’ Rank believes that it is through creativity, particularly the arts, that the human engages the irrational.

© Getty Images

Accepting the paradoxical -

In fact, Rank wrote that when we accept the paradoxical nature of how we live, we can then “discover new values in place of old ones… not mere psychological interpretations predetermined by our preferred ideologies.”

© Getty Images

Constant stream of language -

We constantly turn to language to try to explain our lives through a “constant inner stream of language.” Yet, it becomes increasingly difficult to reach what is beyond language.

© Getty Images

Gaining consciousness -

When we let go of this need for control of life through rationalization and understand that the human being lives in experimental ways that are very often irrational, we can actually gain consciousness of ourselves and society.

© Getty Images

Emotional resignation -

For Rank, the “emotional resignation” of rationality’s “scientific illusion” is key to breaking the pattern of viewing “everything natural as irrational.”

© Getty Images

Martha Nussbaum -

A century later, philosopher Martha Nussbaum (pictured) took Rank’s understanding to another level, making a strong case for “the intelligence of emotions.”

© Getty Images

Emotion's narrative form -

Nussbaum argues that emotions take on a narrative form and that the narratives we tell ourselves configure “our emotional and ethical reality.”

© Getty Images

Arts as therapeutic -

It’s this reliance on narratives that Nussbaum argues is why the arts and literature hold such therapeutic potential for the human being, due to their “psychological function” in producing a sense of wonder and marvel.

© Getty Images

Awe and wonder -

By rejecting “excessive rationality” we, according to scholar Matthew Fox’s reading of Rank’s work, gain wisdom; a “bringing other of the rational (knowledge) and the irrational (awe and love).”

Sources: (The Marginalian) (Commentary) (Otto Rank: Pioneering Ideas for Social Work Theory and Practice) (Matthew Fox)

See also: Friedrich Nietzsche: history's most controversial philosopher

© Getty Images