Editing Otto Rank (section)

== Summary of main ideas ==
Rank was the first to see therapy as a learning and unlearning experience focusing on feelings. The therapeutic relationship allows the patient to: (1) learn more creative ways of thinking, feeling and being in the here-and-now; and (2) unlearn self-destructive ways of thinking, feeling and being in the here-and-now. Patterns of self-destruction ("neurosis") represent a failure of creativity and not, as Freud assumed, a retreat from sexuality.

Rank's psychoanalysis of creativity has recently been applied to [[action learning]], an inquiry-based process of group problem solving, team building, leader development and organizational learning (Kramer 2007; 2008). Transformative action learning, synthesized by Robert Kramer from Rank's writings on art and spirituality, involves real people, working on real problems in real time. Once a safe container is created by a learning coach, questions allow group members to "step out of the frame of the prevailing ideology," as Rank wrote in ''Art and Artist'' (1932/1989, p.&nbsp;70), reflect on their assumptions and beliefs, and reframe their choices. The process of "stepping out" of a frame, out of a form of knowing – a prevailing ideology – is analogous to the work of artists as they struggle to give birth to fresh ways of seeing the world, perspectives that allow them to see aspects of the world that no artists, including themselves, have ever seen before. The heart of transformative action learning, as developed by Kramer, is asking powerful questions to promote the unlearning or letting go of taken-for-granted assumptions and beliefs.

The most creative artists, such as [[Rembrandt]], [[Michelangelo]] and [[Leonardo da Vinci|Leonardo]], know how to separate even from their own greatest public successes, from earlier artistic incarnations of themselves. Their "greatness consists precisely in this reaching out beyond themselves, beyond the ideology which they have themselves fostered," according to ''Art and Artist'' (Rank, 1932/1989, p.&nbsp;368). Through the lens of Otto Rank's work on understanding art and artists, transformative action learning can be seen as the never-completed process of learning how to "step out of the frame" of any mindset, whether one's own or the culture's – in other words, of learning how to unlearn. (Kramer, 2012).

Comparing the process of unlearning to the "breaking out" process of birth, Rank was the first psychologist to suggest that a continual capacity to separate from "internal mental objects" – from internalized institutions, beliefs and neuroses; from the restrictions of culture, social conformity and received wisdom – is the sine qua non for lifelong creativity.

In a 1938 lecture at the University of Minnesota, Rank said: "Life in itself is a mere succession of separations. Beginning with birth, going through several weaning periods and the development of the individual personality, and finally culminating in death – which represents the final separation. At birth, the individual experiences the first shock of separation, which throughout his life he strives to overcome. In the process of adaptation, man persistently separates from his old self, or at least from those segments off his old self that are now outlived. Like a child who has outgrown a toy, he discards the old parts of himself for which he has no further use ….The ego continually breaks away from its worn-out parts, which were of value in the past but have no value in the present. The neurotic [who cannot unlearn, and, therefore, lacks creativity] is unable to accomplish this normal detachment process … Owing to fear and guilt generated in the assertion of his own autonomy, he is unable to free himself, and instead remains suspended upon some primitive level of his evolution" (Rank, 1996, p.&nbsp;270).

Reframing "resistance" as a creative function, not as opposition to interpretations offered by the psychoanalyst, Rank defined [[counterwill]] in the therapeutic relationship as a positive trait that defends the integrity of the self and helps in individuation, unlearning and the discovery of willing.

According to Rank (1932/1989), unlearning or breaking out of our shell from the inside is "a separation [that] is so hard, not only because it involves persons and ideas that one reveres, but because the victory is always, at bottom, and in some form, won over a part of one's ego" (p.&nbsp;375).

In the organizational context, learning how to unlearn is vital because what we assume to be true has merged into our identity. We refer to the identity of an individual as a "mindset." We refer to the identity of an organizational group as a "culture." Action learners learn how to question, probe and separate from, both kinds of identity—i.e., their "individual" selves and their "social" selves. By opening themselves to critical inquiry, they begin to learn how to emancipate themselves from what they "know" – they learn how to unlearn.

In 1974, the cultural anthropologist [[Ernest Becker]] won the [[Pulitzer Prize]] for ''[[The Denial of Death]]'' (1973), which was based on Rank's post-Freudian writings, especially ''Will Therapy'' (1929–1931), ''Psychology and the Soul'' (1930) and ''Art and Artist'' (1932/1989). Becker's posthumously published book, ''Escape from Evil'' (1975) was devoted in large measure to exploring Rank's psychoanalysis rooted in the idea of history as a succession of immortality ideologies. 

Through the influence of Ernest Becker's writings, Rank's dialectic between "life fear and death fear" has been tested experimentally in [[Terror Management Theory]] by [[Skidmore College]] psychology professor [[Sheldon Solomon]], University of Arizona psychology professor [[Jeff Greenberg (professor)|Jeff Greenberg]], and University of Colorado at Colorado Springs psychology professor [[Tom Pyszczynski]].

The American priest and theologian, [[Matthew Fox (priest)|Matthew Fox]], founder of [[Creation Spirituality]] and Wisdom University, considers Rank to be one of the most important psychologists of the 20th century.<ref>See, especially, Fox's book, ''Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet'' (Jeremy P. Tarcher, 2002), {{ISBN|1-58542-329-7}}.</ref>

[[Stanislav Grof]], a founder of [[transpersonal psychology]], based much of his work in prenatal and perinatal psychology on Rank's ''The Trauma of Birth'' (Kripal, 2007, pp.&nbsp;249–269).

In 2008, the philosopher Maxine Sheets-Johnstone published ''The Roots of Morality'' (Pennsylvania State University Press). She compares Rank's thought favorably to that of René Descartes, Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida: "Because immortality ideologies were originally recognized and in fact so named by Rank, a close examination of his writings on the subject is not only apposite but is itself philosophically rewarding ... Rank was a Freudian dissident who, in introducing the concept of immortality ideologies, traced out historical and psychological roots of 'soul-belief' (''Seelenglaube'')... [My chapter] points up the extraordinary cogency of Rank's distinction between the rational and the irrational to the question of the human need for immortality ideologies" (Sheets-Johnstone, 2008, p.&nbsp;64). Sheets-Johnstone concludes her book on a note reminiscent of Rank's plea for the human value of mutual love over arid intellectual insight: "Surely it is time for ''Homo sapiens sapiens'' to turn away from the pursuit of domination over all and to begin cultivating and developing its sapiential wisdom in the pursuit of caring, nurturing and strengthening that most precious muscle which is its heart" (ibid., pp.&nbsp;405–06).<ref>{{cite journal|last=Sheets-Johnstone|first=Maxine|title=Death and immortality ideologies in Western philosophy|journal=Continental Philosophy Review|year=2003|volume=36|issue=3|pages=235–262|doi=10.1023/B:MAWO.0000003937.47171.a9|s2cid=143977431}}</ref>