Schismatic processes in the psychoanalytic movement and their impact on the formation of theories

Abstract

Of the first generation of psychoanalysts, Otto Rank was the one to discover how immensely significant the importance of the early mother–child relation is for the psychosocial development of the human being. The basic perspective of the psychoanalytic theory and treatment technique, which had first and foremost before then concentrated on the father, was not broadened until Rank's book The Trauma of Birth and its Meaning for Psychoanalysis was published (1924/1952). Even the term “pre-oedipality” goes back to Rank (1927, p. 14), a fact which is not widely known as Rank's oeuvre was scarcely read after he had parted with Freud. In the following, a discussion of Otto Rank's birth trauma theory will be presented in the context of the history of theories, and the “trauma of birth” metaphor will be illustrated by the Oedipus legend and by the figure of the Sphinx.