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Otto Rank and the Modernist Identity Michael L University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2007 "A Woman's Face, or Worse": Otto Rank and the modernist identity Michael L. Shuman University of South Florida Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons Scholar Commons Citation Shuman, Michael L., ""A Woman's Face, or Worse": Otto Rank and the modernist identity" (2007). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/2365 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. "A Woman's Face, or Worse": Otto Rank and the Modernist Identity by Michael L. Shuman A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Phillip J. Sipiora, Ph.D. Gaëtan Brulotte, Ph.D. Silvio Gaggi, Ph.D. Richard Wilber, Ed.D. Date of Approval: March 23, 2007 Keywords: lawrence, eliot, yeats, culture, psychoanalysis © Copyright 2007 , Michael L. Shuman Dedication In memory of my Mother Mildred Josephine Shuman who taught me the immeasurable joy of a great book and for my Father Earl Ervin Shuman who showed me the incomparable power of a gentle spirit Live as though you’ll die tomorrow; learn as though you’ll live forever. Acknowledgments My research into the life and work of Otto Rank began nearly forty years ago in the undergraduate classroom of Clarence Wolfshohl, and since then I have tried to follow that great teacher’s lead in exploring both the logic and whimsy of the passionate intellect. His interest in the diverse accomplishments of William Morris prompted the topic of my master’s thesis, and his comments about an obscure machinist-psychoanalyst from Leopoldstadt eventually led to this dissertation. For his continuing inspiration and encouragement, I am humbled and grateful. Dr. Phillip Sipiora, my dissertation advisor, deserves multiple acknowledgments for reading my work and providing encouragement and advice at the most inconvenient of times, but this single thanks alone will have to do. Dr. Silvio Gaggi is remarkably adept at offering invaluable advice at just the right time, and I thank him for his insight and for his propitious instinct. I hope the scholarly enthusiasm of Dr. Gaëtan Brulotte is replicated in this text: his commitment to illuminating a most important aspect of human character persists despite the impediments of economics and publishing houses. Dr. Rick Wilber’s intimate knowledge of Irish character not only influenced my chapter on Yeats but, in the telling, captivated me with the warmth and conviction of his speculative imagination. I wish these acknowledgements could be so graciously told. Finally, a special thanks to my wife, Susan, who has proofread nearly everything I’ve ever written with attention and patience. Gratitude always returns to the hearth. Table of Contents Abstract ii Introduction 1 Chapter One: Otto Rank: Within Culture 22 Chapter Two: “The Man’s World”: D. H. Lawrence 60 Chapter Three: The Shadow Explorer: T. S. Eliot 91 Chapter Four: “A Woman’s Face, or Worse”: William Butler Yeats 127 Chapter Five: Otto Rank: Beyond Theory 175 Conclusion 198 Chapter Notes 207 Works Cited 217 About the Author End Page i “A Woman’s Face, or Worse”: Otto Rank and the Modernist Identity Michael L. Shuman ABSTRACT Otto Rank is a significant but generally overlooked figure in the early history of psychoanalysis, and his work provides an illuminating context for the study of subjectivity and modernist culture. The “modernist identity” of my title is intended to represent, first, the concept of the individual self identified and expressed during this period and, secondly, the unique identity of modernist culture developed by artists through creative acts and emanating as the intellectual ambiance of the era. Through an examination of Rank’s later theories and the work of prominent modernist artists, including Lawrence, Yeats, and Eliot, this dissertation will show that Rank’s expository writings emerge as psychoanalytic and cultural inquiry expressing essentially the same intellectual and social precepts presented by prominent modernist writers in substantially different ways. Rank’s work therefore exists as a cotextual statement of the grand themes of those artists and of that era. I also show that Rank’s perception of the modernist landscape, whether literary, social, or cultural, at once illuminates and refutes the concept of modernism consciously constructed and advanced, as a poetic manifesto, by artists generally associated with the traditional modernist temperament. The diverse voices of modernism, in fact, often represented Rankian irrationality over the Freudian unconscious, a personality capable of reconstructing the fragmented self over one ii acquiescing to disintegration, and the spiritual or magical over the rational constructs of a progressively more scientific and technological age. I will demonstrate that Rank’s theories provide not only a method for reading literature but a means for addressing issues critical for our time, including subjectivity, the process of individuation, diversity, and the empowering exercise of creative will. The work of Eli Zaretsky and other contemporary cultural theorists, although never mentioning Rank or his work, presents the duty of criticism and psychoanalysis in our time as remarkably consistent with Rank’s notion of psychoanalysis and the place of the individual in culture. Rank’s ideas, originally founded upon nineteenth-century science and psychoanalysis, ultimately provide a context for understanding twentieth-century modernist culture as well as a rationale for developing a new concept of humanism and for advancing twenty-first century post-theory literary studies. iii Introduction Otto Rank, for nearly twenty years one of Freud’s closest associates, was a prominent early contributor to the psychoanalytic movement. Rank accepted the first paid position with the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society in 1906 and eventually became the youngest member of the secret Committee established to promote the cause of Freudian psychology. He co-founded Imago and Internationale Zeitschrift für ärztliche Psychoanalyse, two leading early psychoanalytic journals, and published the first book on psychoanalysis not written by Freud himself, a 1907 study of the creative process entitled Der Künstler. Rank contributed two chapters to the 1914 edition of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, sharing authorial credit for that monumental work, and was one of the first psychoanalysts to lecture and practice in the United States. Yet Rank’s works remain uncollected, some important texts even untranslated, and current research on psychoanalysis generally dismisses Rank with a passing comment, if he is mentioned at all. Why is such a significant figure in arguably the most important intellectual movement of the twentieth century normally excluded from the discussion of the history and practice of psychoanalysis? The answer is The Trauma of Birth, a revisionist work Rank published in 1924 as an attempt to qualify Freud’s fundamental notion of the oedipal basis for anxiety in human behavior. Rank’s theory viewed birth as the first experience of separation and thus the primary source for personal anxiety. “Birth 1 precedes weaning, weaning precedes walking, walking precedes the Oedipus conflict,” E. James Lieberman explains in Acts of Will, his biography of Rank. “He identified the mother as the original locus both of comfort (the womb) and of distress (birth). Adult conflict about the sex act was ascribed to anxiety centered in and symbolized by the female genitals” (221-22). Rank’s theory at first viewed the source of anxiety solely in the literal process of birth, but he later expanded this concept to include any form of separation in an individual’s life, including the effort involved in developing an autonomous self, creating a work of art, or seeking immortality through creative will. Birth trauma came to indicate the process of individuation, the “birth” process of a person in the creative act of differentiating the self from other human beings. Regardless of Rank’s intent and the eventual evolution of his concept of birth trauma, the notion soon was interpreted by the psychoanalytic community as a transgression against canonical Freudian theory, and Rank was not only ostracized by European professional societies, but rejected by Freud himself.1 Rank’s reputation has not recovered from his split from Freud and the ensuing rejection of the psychoanalytic community. Both Lieberman and Esther Menaker, two prominent psychoanalysts, have attempted to acquaint professional and lay readers with Rank’s work through new translations and evaluations of his theories unclouded by academic or economic prejudice, with mixed results. Ernest Becker’s Pulitzer Prize- winning The Denial of Death (1973) similarly presents Rank’s ideas concerning individuation and love in the context of Kierkegaard’s work, in language accessible to a general audience, and Becker insists upon the logical rigor of Rank’s ideas. “Rank made 2 complete closure of psychoanalysis on Kierkegaard,” Becker maintains, “but he did not do it out of weakness or wishfulness. He did
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