Circulating Metaphors of Sexuality, Aggression, and Power: Otto Rank's Analysis of “Conquering Cities and ‘Conquering’ Women”

Abstract

During the years before World War I, Otto Rank was a member of Freud's inner circle and a major early contributor the psychoanalytic interpretation of myth, literature, and artistic creation (Rank, 1912/1992; 1925, Rank & Sachs, 1913). In this paper?published in January 1914, just a few months before the outbreak of World War I?he drew together numerous examples from European literature of symbolic links between the of cities by armies and the conquest of women by men. Thus victory in battle is represented as the courtship?or rape?of a woman; alternatively, men lay siege or a woman (or a woman's heart), as they would a fortress or city. This reciprocal symbolic connection is easy recognize in numerous English examples, but it is even easier grasp in German, where the single verb werben can mean both to conquer and to court. Rank wrote this paper illustrate two points of psychoanalytic theory: (1) the importance of symbolism?in literature as in dreams?and (2) the existence of a sadistic or mastery drive as an important component of the libido (the term Freud used designate the sexual group of instincts or motivational forces). Six years after Rank's paper, and two years after the most war in human history up that time, Freud (1920/1955) made a fundamental revision in his theory of motivation. Instead of including sadism and mastery in the libidinal motive group, Freud placed them in a wholly separate group of death or destructive instincts. Phrased in the language of Freud's later theory, Rank's analysis focuses on ways in which these two major motive groups are combined or fused.