TO BE MORE PERSON

Truth and the Beautiful Appearance: The influence of Friedrich Nietzsche in the psychoanalysis of Otto Rank

Julio Roberto Costa, M. S.

Epis Journal of Psychoanalysis, Phenomenology & Critical Theory – 2018

ISBN: 978-1-943332-19-9

Abstract

Otto Rank was the only member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society who had a Ph.D. in Philosophy, and this was reflected in his work. Taking this as a starting point, we may have a better understanding of what Rank denominated as illusion, which has always led to a problematic approach. We try to see the question of the illusion by means of Friedrich Nietzsche, who considered the appearance as unavoidable. Taking

into consideration its meaning in Nietzsche’s philosophy, we must understand that the problem was not a struggle on overcoming the appearances of the world in search of an essence that would be elsewhere, which presupposes redemption in a future world, or in science—which, according to Nietzsche, can only describe the world, failing in providing meaning. Therefore, Nietzsche values the pre-Socratic Greece, which dared to live the appearance as appearance, which was made possible by the aesthetic phenomenon. Art was shaped as a fusion of the Dionysian with the Apollonian, which we can understand as the union of everything that affirms life (the Dionysian element of instinct) with the love of form (the Apollonian element of proportion and measure).

Thus, the question of what was most appropriate was no longer a question of essence, but of what enhances life, where Nietzsche found the art of Greek tragedy as the sublime paradigm. Therefore, many aspects of Otto Rank, once considered obscure, can be better addressed in a new light, including the relevance of the artist in his work.

Introduction

We can consider Otto Rank to be the most philosophical among the first psychoanalysts of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. First, we have the fact that he was not a physician. Second, he was used in reading the great philosophers, mainly Nietzsche, years before meeting psychoanalysis.

The chances are that Freud considered advantageous for psychoanalysis someone outside the medical field and familiar with the great classical works, not only in the form of literature but of theater, poetry and human sciences in general. Therefore, Freud funded the studies of Rank until he attained his Ph.D. in philosophy. In his work, the presence of German idealism, and especially of Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche, was very relevant. And here, we have important questions regarding phenomena and noumenon, representation and will, as well as appearance and essence.

In this article, I would like to focus on Nietzsche’s influence on Otto Rank, for the aspect that will be quite difficult in his work, which is the illusion. Initially, we need to know that Rank himself was aware of how this could be misinterpreted. Jessie Taft, who was a former student of Rank and then a therapist and translator of some of his works for English, talks about his concern in her introduction to his book Will Therapy.

The reader of psychoanalysis who set eyes on a book by Rank may have the impression that he was extremely subjective, and in favor of escapism, at the times when he uses the word illusion. Psychoanalyst Esther Menaker points this out in her book on Rank, Separation, Will and Creativity:

…Rank perceived the subjective nature of reality, the impossibility to humankind to live solely with a so-called subjective truth, and the need to create illusion in order to survive. He wrote: ‘Our seeking the truth in human motives for acting and thinking is destructive. With the truth one cannot live. To be able to live one’s needs illusions, not only outer illusions such as art, religion, philosophy, science and love afford, but inner illusions which first conditions the other. The more a man can take appearance as truth, the sounder, the better adjusted, the happier he will be.’ (Menaker, 1996, p. 104).

Menaker continues:

And what of illusion, in Rank’s view? The outer illusions to which he refers are twofold: first, the belief systems that pass in historical succession from one into another, consoling and comforting us as we try to find a meaningful place in the cosmic scheme of things; second, those creations of humankind—art, philosophy, religion and science—from which individuals, singly or collectively, derive meaning. Ernest Becker has expressed it well when he says: ‘man needs a ‘second world,’ a world of humanly created meaning, a new reality that he can live, dramatize, nourish himself in. ‘Illusion’ means creative play at its highest level.” (Menaker, 1996, p. 105).

Although Menaker shows us the question very precisely in terms of clinical practice, especially in the integrated sense of the self, relevant for example in the treatment of anxiety, one can find the root of the illusion in the strong presence of philosophy in Rank’s thought, which also finds support in the fact that Freud, at the beginning of psychoanalysis, sought to relate the unconscious to the Kantian thing in itself.

To the reader of today, the usual tendency would be to consider that Rank was escaping from Freud’s ideal of having psychoanalysis as a natural science. Although, as we shall see, he was following his philosophical heritage with Nietzsche, and asked the question: Plato or Homer?

In his biography of Otto Rank, Acts of Will, E. James Lieberman shows with clarity of details the influence of Nietzsche on Rank, from his youth (Lieberman, 1985, 30). Moreover, according to Lieberman, one must observe Nietzsche as a philosopher in whom poetry played a significant role, not only in his writing but in his understanding of the world. When Nietzsche exalts the will, he does so in accordance with his own subjective experience. It must be considered that Freud sought to observe the will objectively by the model of natural science, even considering that, from phenomena, we can only have representations—and this according to his struggle to validate psychoanalysis as a natural science.

In the question of the will, however, difficulties arise. According to Lieberman, Freud and Nietzsche agreed on the importance of the irrational, but for Freud, the concept of will could only be linked to a pre-scientific view of psychology, still linked to the theology and the philosophy of morality. If there is a need to apply a deterministic approach of cause and effect, the will disappears, with wish remaining as the expression of the libido and, ultimately, of physiology (Lieberman, 1985, p. 33).

Lieberman tells us that the importance of sexuality was nothing new in relation to psychiatry at the time, although Nietzsche’s narrative of the will would appear to be more philosophical and poetic than psychiatric or medical (Lieberman, 1985, p. 33-34). Regarding Kant’s importance, however, we can observe that, at the same time that Freud valued the notion of the thing in itself as a reality behind appearances—and it was precisely this archeology of reality that he sought—Freud did not penetrate the concept of noumenon, because the objectivity that he sought was within the scientific positivism of his time. This positivistic view, admittedly, sticks to the phenomenon, and what lies behind a particular phenomenon could only be another phenomenon.

However, we have that the Kantian noumenon cannot be known, but can be thought of. This means that symbolism and poetry are free to speak of the noumenon, keeping only the condition that they must not go against the moral imperatives of practical reason.

This, however, is far from subjectivism, which was associated by Kant with the old metaphysics. As an Enlightenment philosopher, he reacted against metaphysics, not only motivated by Hume’s skepticism, but by realizing that subjectivism or idealism were close to the authoritarian dogmatism of his time. According to the Brazilian psychoanalyst Paulo Cezar Sandler, the strict positivism of the Kant era was called by himself “naïve realism,” and still used in our times by Ernest Cassirer and Gaston Bachelard, among many others (Sandler, 2000, p. 25).

From there, the imaginary was not an illusion in the sense of being a lie in relation to the real, although, connected to practical reason by the utility, helps us in dealing with the real, as Hans Vaihinger asserts:

From this it can be concluded: just as science (especially mathematics) leads to the imaginary, so it also leads life to the impossible, which, however, is possible—to absolute responsibility for one’s actions, absolute freedom, good deeds for their own sake (absolutely). You are a human being, and you must have these noble feelings.

Thus, the imaginary (the absolute, the ideal) is justified despite its unreality. Without this aspect of the imaginary, neither science nor life are possible in its highest forms. (Vaihinger, 2011, p. 174).

“Only ideas, albeit practical ones” – A panorama of the Kantian legacy on fiction

Initially, we have that David Hume wanted to oppose his philosophy to dogmatism. To this end, he adopted an extremely skeptical stance on the certainties that were held as common sense until then, also attacking the possibility of metaphysics, through a skeptical standpoint, based on the limitations of the human capacity in understanding the world.

It was through David Hume that Immanuel Kant went to a certain appreciation for skepticism. However, Kant considered that Hume did not have satisfactory answers to the moral problems. What Kant will do, primarily through his books Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason, will be to separate skepticism, as a result of human limitations in knowing the world, of moral postulates, which now have an a priori source, detached from the sensible world.

What Kant will put forward is that when speculative reason—that which deals with the world that can be perceived with the senses—tries to penetrate the world of moral reason, it can only create the old dogmatism. Hence, metaphysics cannot aspire to the category of science.

Kant goes on to argue that moral postulates are necessary, but they are just ideas, as, for instance, God, which is not a phenomenon, although these ideas are practical ones, as necessary regulatory principles. Thus, it is necessary to think of morality as a coherent system, which is part of a world that is not the sensible world, but, as Kant named it, an intelligible world, which human beings partake, as they are beings endowed with reason. It is important to see that, through freedom, each individual could act differently, but the moral law imposes itself on the reason of each one, in such a way that the individuals agree with general rules. All moral actions, therefore, appear as if they spring from the same source, which imposes itself upon the reason of each individual, presenting itself as sovereign, perfect and rational. Such a source manifests itself within each individual as an imperative. We can see that Kant created a clear division between the sensible world and the intelligible world.

However, it is important to keep in mind that this philosophy was seen as extremely pessimistic concerning the culture of his time, especially regarding religion and morality, where it was considered necessary to have a real knowledge about God and the origins of morality. In his book Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone Kant places religion as assistance to ethics, which led him to be penalized by the then Prussian king.

Regarding his context, one must also consider that Kant was an Enlightenment philosopher, and that the separation of church and state was imperative within the new thought, together with the criticism of the “divine right of kings”—which in itself was a threat to the aristocracy as well as to the clergy that was intimately attached to it.

Therefore, we must understand that Kant was regarded as a destroyer. Moreover, for the spirit of his age, to say that we can know nothing on God or on the immortality of the soul—even if these concepts were viewed as necessary postulates of morality—it was a great break with all metaphysics until then.

We see that Kant needed to question those that were considered absolute truths, and that this was fundamental to the creation of Western Modernity. This move also created an instance of fiction, that is, those things that were “only ideas,” although had the attribute of practicality, that is, utility, even if they were separated from the possibility of empirical verification.

It is necessary to remember that all the philosophers of German Idealism will be tributaries of the path opened by Kant in relation to the primacy of thought, and here we have the answer to the British Empiricism of David Hume, that Kant considered unacceptable by its moral consequences. In broad terms, German Idealism will be the defense of moral reason in the face of the skepticism of British Empiricism.

Developments on the practical fiction

The philosophers Hans Vaihinger and Jules de Gaultier will make interesting connections between Kant and Nietzsche, precisely on the path that Kant provided. This path will be given by the recognition that those concepts, which are “only ideas,” albeit practical ones, could be understood as fictions that are necessary for life. This does not mean that the act of lying was considered ethical, but that fiction became an additional instrument for the relationship with reality, and, moreover, necessary due to the limitations of human cognition.

Jules de Gaultier gives us a very clear illustration of this question of utility, offering an insight that could be applied to any human group at the beginning of History:

… the human group itself takes cognizance of itself, of what is harmful and what is useful to it. It is going to do for itself what every scientist does for the chemical bodies that he wishes to preserve… The human group takes the same measures of defense against the surrounding milieu and against its own inner tendency. Everything useful to it it prescribes for itself, and everything harmful it forbids itself. (Gaultier, 1961, p. 7).

Gaultier was deeply influenced by Nietzsche. Thus, he will say that everything that preserves the human group corresponds to the “Vital Instinct,” to the strengthening of potency, health, and vitality, including the necessary interdictions—which are the self-imposed law of the group members. At this point, Gaultier is very close to Otto Rank, being faithful to the instinct that leads towards life (from Nietzsche), while admitting restrictions coming from self-determination (with similarities to Kant).

The question of Gaultier passes through the pessimism put on canvas by Schopenhauer, and Gaultier agrees with the solution provided by Nietzsche, that is, it is by the esthetic phenomenon that the human being elaborates, by means of culture, the pains of the world, bringing it to the human experience in a way that does not weaken the will to power. However, Gaultier values Schopenhauer’s pessimism more than Kant’s moral solution in his Critique of Practical Reason.

Following the influence of Buddhism and Hinduism on Schopenhauer’s thought, Gaultier argues that it is by the withdrawal of the veil of Maya that the human being can achieve joy, in the meaning of Nietzsche. What needs to be defeated is the belief that the typical representation of the world, through theoretical reason observing the phenomenon, is a correct view of reality, for in this way the world presents itself as a stage of pain and absurdity. The relief, in Buddhism and Hinduism, comes from the unveiling of this deception of the phenomenon, and the great joy of the individual is to realize that all his torments concerning the problems of life in this world are illusory, for the world, as a phenomenon, is the illusion of the will. By means of creating the work of art, the individual “leaves the stage,” and allows himself to contemplate, as a spectator in the audience, all those vicissitudes and problems that once afflicted him or her. Now those afflictions can be seen with detachment, as the interesting plot of an ancient Homer narrative, beautiful to be heard and witnessed. Thus, we see that pessimism becomes the optimism of the beautiful appearance:

It was shown how the revelation of the unreality of the phenomenon, a cause of suicide in a depressed race, is the pretext for a new life in the western endowed with a superabundance of energy. It was shown… how western sensibility, perceiving life as woe, is following this initiation transformed into an aesthetic sensibility, eager to perpetuate the spectacle, to describe it, to evoke it and how, once informed and taken into confidence, now adores and celebrates Life for its beauty with the same ardor with which, in its state of blindness, it used to curse Life for its cruelty. (Gaultier, 1961, p. 236-237).

It is for this aspect of utility that we must understand the fiction and the illusion.

According to Rank, from the world we can only have representations that need to be interpreted. Thus, here we have the meaning of illusion from the inheritance of Kant’s regulatory principles, and also from the concept of appearance in Nietzsche.

The influence of Immanuel Kant in the beginnings of Psychoanalysis

We must understand that Sigmund Freud was deeply concerned to provide a solid foundation for psychoanalysis as a science. From the accounts to which we have access today, one can see that the influence of Immanuel Kant was relevant. Freud was willing to relate the thing in itself, which is behind the phenomena, to the very unconscious.

Ludwig Binswanger wrote about the presence of Kant in the formulations of Freud, where he reports:

He [Freud] said that we behaved as if the unconscious were a reality in the image of the conscious. However, as a true scientific researcher, he says nothing about the nature of the unconscious, because we know nothing with certainty, or above all, we can only infer from the conscious. He asserts that, just as Kant postulated the thing in itself behind appearance, it postulated, behind the conscious accessible to our experience, the unconscious, but that could never be an object of direct knowledge. (Fulgêncio, 2006, p. 9).

We can see that Freud was working within the Kantian critique on the limits of human knowledge. At the moment of Binswanger’s observation, he saw the unconscious as a thing in itself in the Kantian sense, that is, as an object unknowable in itself, but which must be introduced as a fiction, so that it can be better worked.

However, in the sessions of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, Freud will always remain cautious in dealing with philosophical questions. Regarding the aspect of the epistemological approach to the unconscious, it will maintain the differentiation between what appears and what is not directly known. Therefore, what is postulated has a heuristic function, although it cannot be confused with the reality per se.

Thus, it is possible to say that Freud, even building psychoanalysis as a natural science, agreed with the Kantian assumption that the nature of the psyche is that of a set of representations, of the world and the sensations.

We must now see the contribution of Nietzsche. In common with Kant, we have that the two philosophers dealt with questions concerning duality: phenomenon and noumenon, in Kant, and essence and appearance, in Nietzsche. The connection between the two, in this respect, was studied by Hans Vaihinger, who adopts a position derived from pragmatism and perspectivism.

Vaihinger has a place in the theory of knowledge due to his concept of fiction as an abstraction that helps in bringing order to the understanding of the world; fiction is, therefore, an instrument for knowledge, such as deduction and induction. Fiction is something that adds to knowledge, being an approximation of reality, rather than being a departure from it. It will be differentiated from the hypothesis by the fact that it is the hypothesis that can be confirmed with the empirical data; however, fiction continues being an auxiliary resource.

Vaihinger’s question is: “How could we achieve the right goals, taking into consideration that we deal only with representations?” What Vaihinger places is that we preserve assumptions even if we are aware that they are only approximations, although, in doing so, we succeed in acting in the world.

Vaihinger will seek the roots of this position in Kant’s work, and its continuity in the concept of Nietzsche’s beautiful appearance. It is certain that Nietzsche will fight Kant in many points, just as he fights Schopenhauer, to whom he owes much of his concept of will. However, Vaihinger will consider Kant as the one who discovered, as the thing in itself as the frontier of knowledge, the practical value of appearance, and that it should be accepted as so. Vaihinger will value the practical aspects of fictions, with many examples from mathematics, and with notions as the point, which has no place within the sensible world, but which must be accepted as a convention: for instance, we must believe in the point for the purposes of geometry. Therefore, some concepts need to be accepted as if they were part of our certainties. Vaihinger bridges

all this with Nietzsche’s perspectivism. Here we have a passage in which Vaihinger quotes Nietzsche in this context:

… “being” is a “simplification for practical purposes,” based on the artificial creation of identical cases, it is “an image” that we impute for the sake of practical utility and perspective, because “in us, there is a power that orders, falsifies and separates artificially.” Its products, however, these many “falsifications,” are useful and necessary: for “life is based on such assumptions.” The pretend world of subject, substance, reason, is necessary. (Vaihinger, 2011, p.664).

Nietzsche and the beautiful appearance

Having made this bridge between Kant and Nietzsche, let us now turn to the question of appearance in Nietzsche, and his reasons. Nietzsche’s great model was pre- Socratic Greece. He regarded the Greek spirit as highly vulnerable to the pain of existence. Moreover, they were bearers of a pessimistic wisdom, such as that of Silenus, whom Nietzsche quotes in the Birth of Tragedy:

There is an old story that King Midas had hunted for the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, for a long time in the woods without catching him. But when he finally fell into his hands, the King asked: “What is the best and most preferable thing for Man?” The demon remained silent, stubborn, and motionless; and then broke out into shrill laughter, uttering these words: “Miserable, ephemeral species, children of chance and of hardship, why do you compel me to tell you what is most profitable for you not to hear. The very best is quite unattainable for you: it is, not to be born, not to exist, to be Nothing. However, the next best for you is—to die soon.” (Nietzsche, 2013, p. 33).

Given this, how do we understand the creation of Apollonian art? Here we will have an approximation with his understanding by Vaihinger, as Nietzsche will tell us that “life is possible only by artistic mirages.” In the Greeks, art is closely linked with religion, and its virtue is to produce an abundance of life, the stimulus to life. Still in the wake of Schopenhauer’s pessimism, pessimism close to the wisdom of Silenus, it can be said that, despite the pains of life, one must be seduced to life through beautiful appearances, as Nietzsche shows us, in The Birth of Tragedy. He considers that the Greek gods do not make the apology for salvation in another world, in an afterlife, but they bring the stimulus to life, which divinizes that which exists. Moreover, to deify, here, means to make beautiful.

From the mythological narratives, we realize that the gods of the Olympus were not necessarily good, but they were beautiful—that is, they seduce to life. For its part, beauty is the measure, the proportion, and the elegant moderation, proper attributes of Apollo.

Thus, Apollonian art intended to replace the terrible truth of the world, as Silenus stated, by beautiful forms. This was the elegant and refined measure. However, the disruptive aspect of reality could not fail in being considered. This aspect seemed to be tough and disturbing, subverting the serenity of the Apollonian forms. This element will be represented by Dionysus, who can be terrible and bring back, in the eyes of civilization, the pessimistic wisdom of Silenus. Apollo, therefore, represented individuation, brought about by proportional and serene forms, for the individual, in order to exist, needs limits and measures. However, Dionysus brings the dissolution of limits into drunkenness, which presents itself as ecstasy. However, when the ecstasy ends, there remains only the vision of the absurdity of life. At that moment, the absurdity appears as the truth, but it is a truth that destroys the individual, and, not just the individual, but destroys the State, destroys History, and civilization. However, it is important to note that this is not the Dionysus that Nietzsche praises. It was clear how nature, in its raw state, could be destructive. Redemption will have to be done by means of art. However, if one previously sought to preserve Apollo by placing barriers against Dionysus, this time the art will incorporate Dionysus along with Apollo. Thus, the absurdity of existence will be transformed into a beautiful representation, capable of making life possible.

Therefore, Nietzsche considers that the most important moment in Greek art is the reconciliation between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The pure Dionysian is impossible to live, for it leads to annihilation and the feeling of absurdity. The Apollonian element brings a beautiful appearance to the cruel aspect of nature and redeems it; from now on nature can be lived without leading to absurdity and emptiness. As Nietzsche tells us in his Posthumous Fragments: “It is not in the alternation between lucidity and drunkenness, but in its simultaneity, that the Dionysian aesthetic state is found.” (Nietzsche apud Machado, 2017, p. 36). Therefore, it is as if Apollo had taught the measures to the Barbarian Dionysus, thus transforming him into the Hellenic Dionysus.

We have seen how the Greek world dealt with appearance and essence. Most importantly, to understand the illusion in Rank, is that appearance was not something that should disappear in favor of essence, but appearance and essence, if understood respectively as Apollo and Dionysus, needed to be united in the art of tragedy, and, more than that, to be together in life. When tragic art unites beautiful appearance with raw essence, it saves culture from the danger of annihilation.

It is, therefore, the disappearance of the opposition between Apollo and Dionysus that is needed. As the Nietzschean Dionysian is necessarily artistic, the conflict between beautiful appearance and essential truth that does not allow appearance, that is, which does not allow art, disappears. We must understand that the hero dies, but his death has meaning within a larger picture—thus, the hero dies, but his death is not the victory of the absurdity.

As this is the young Nietzsche, the presence of Arthur Schopenhauer is still strongly perceived, in what is, for Nietzsche, the Primordial Unity. As in Schopenhauer, the individual can accept to perish, knowing that life itself never dies. We see, then, that the tragic element of art translates the great wisdom of the ancient Greeks, and there must be some construction, some representation that is not merely an account of the sensible world, as Nietzsche tells us, elsewhere in his Posthumous Fragments:

The only possibility of life: in art. Otherwise, we stray from life. The instinctive movement of the sciences is the complete annihilation of illusion; if there were no art, the consequence would be quietism (Nietzsche apud Machado, 2017, p. 59).

The Welcoming of the Will in the Beautiful Appearance

At this point, we can more accurately perceive what Otto Rank tells us regarding illusion: that the human being is necessarily a creator, an artist, a creator of the beautiful appearance.

On this point, the Brazilian philosopher Roberto Machado adds:

One could say that while the “lie” of science would want to find the truth of the world as something other than appearance, the “truth” of art is to believe in the image as an image, in appearance as appearance the superiority of art over science is not to oppose the illusion, it is to affirm life fully. (Machado, 2017, p. 59-60).

As Rank wrote in his book Will Therapy, we cannot have the direct assurance of the world, but, as a condition for action, the world must be interpreted. This interpretation is not perfect, although we must believe in it. So, we are always believing in interpretations. However, unlike what is commonly considered the “illusion,” this is not a narcotic that brings an escape, but is a tonic for life, and this is Nietzsche’s orientation, which Rank sets in his work.

Thus, concerning the use of the concept of “truth,” these considerations must be taken into account in the context to which they belong. In Nietzsche’s terms, the will to truth, where we have the metaphysical opposition between truth and falsity, belongs to what Nietzsche calls Socratism, as well as post-Socratic Greek philosophy. Equally, it must be understood that this philosophy of truth and appearance, where appearance is the equivalent of error, is a philosophy, according to Nietzsche, of weak men with weak will to power. According to him, it is a Christian morality before Christianity, which would be a “Platonism for the masses.” Nietzsche, therefore, poses as false the metaphysical opposition of values, and values the appearance of form precisely to go against this opposition. Art as appearance goes beyond the ascetic ideal. Thus, Plato becomes the “voluntary of the beyond,” a slanderer of life; in opposition, we have Homer, who makes the exultation of life and the approval of existence.

Thus, it is possible to affirm that Rank followed Kant in the aspect of the ethics, but, in the matter of appearance and the essence, followed Nietzsche. The question of Nietzsche to which Rank follows is that the ultimate criterion of the validity of something is the intensification of life, the strengthening of the will to power. Thus, the ultimate criterion of judgment over knowledge is life; it is not, therefore, an epistemological judgment. As Nietzsche tells us in Beyond Good and Evil:

We do not see in the falsity of a judgment an objection to this judgment The question is to know to what extent a judgment is apt to promote life It is time to understand that the conservation of beings of our species requires that we believe in them. That does not stop these judgments from being false. Let us recognize: no life can exist except for the estimations and appearances inherent in its perspective. (Nietzsche).

This we repeatedly find in Rank, and we can thus understand the differentiation he makes between theory and therapy: theory seeks the truth, but therapy must stimulate the will of the patient, in which he or she must believe in representations and fictions, and this means confidence in his or her own will to power. However, as a differentiation from metaphysics and traditional moral systems, it should be noted that these values are at the level of life and the organic force of life. Nietzsche’s question is always: do these values, for example, make an individual healthier, more courageous, more vigorous, or make the individual weaker and sicker? Thus, the question of Rank was to provide vigor to the will of the man, as Rank put it, to offer him faith in himself, which is different from faith in society or faith in a reason which imposes itself in a heteronomous way.

And it is certain that here, in Rank’s conception, is added the Kantian concept of an a priori morality, but always of a morality that is at the service of the affirmation of the human being—as Rank stated, in a clearly Nietzschean passage, that the true human values are the values of the affirmation of life.

We can conceive, then, that although Rank has affirmed the value of self-determination of the individual, and his ability to choose in relation to the moral law that he or she possesses a priori, the content of the moral law does not imply an ethics of asceticism. Ethics, in this vision, consists in the affirmation of human life, which unites Apollo and Dionysus.

The difference of Rank is that he accepts self-preservation. For Nietzsche, the will to power implies a constant growth, in a constant breaking of barriers. Thus, weak men, where the power is sick, cannot go forward, for they are afraid of losing the little life they have. According to Nietzsche, it is at this point that moral restraints are made, just as we understand the term in its moral and religious contexts. The barriers which are now placed serve to preserve the little life that weak men still have, and Nietzsche sees this as demerit and denial. In Rank, the picture is different, and, in this passage from Beyond Psychology, we see that Rank embodied the Kantian virtue of temperance:

The individual … automatically refrained from certain activities which directly or indirectly seemed to threaten his own self. Since the majority felt that way, the aboriginal law appears un-imposed, a requirement of vital importance … We obey the moral law because, with its self-preserving function, it is merely an impression of our moral self. (Rank, 1945, p. 84).

Conclusions

Seeking to place psychoanalysis as a natural science, Freud was not willing to consider the will, seen in his day as a romantic idea. However, he was aware that the object of knowledge of the scientist are phenomena, not reality in itself, which is unknowable. However, while he acknowledges that psychic reality is representational, he will not penetrate philosophy in such a way to make a distinction similar to that of phenomena and noumenon, appearance and essence, and so on. Thus, even making references to Kant, he did not arrive at something that would be “only an idea, albeit a practical one,” that is, where utility provides space for the “fiction for practical purposes.”

In Jules de Gaultier’s book, From Kant to Nietzsche, we observe that it is precisely through his pessimism that optimism becomes possible. It is the art that makes the human condition beautiful, from the fact that nature, in its original state, presents itself as cruel, being the Barbarian Dionysius, who, according to Roberto Machado, differs from the Hellenic Dionysus of Nietzsche, which was necessarily artistic, and, according to Vaihinger, conveys the “fiction for practical purposes”.

By his understanding of psychoanalysis and philosophy, Rank will start from the most melancholic aspects of the understanding of the human condition, which leads to the absurdity, to welcome the Kantian value of self-determination. We realize that fiction for practical purposes is always present, not as a lie, but as the imaginary that is justified despite its unreality, with the necessary self-determination to affirm the laws derived from freedom. Therefore, health comes from the union of practical reason with the affirmation of life:

Here we can define self-determination as a voluntary and conscious creation of one’s own fate. This means to have no fate in an external sense, but to accept and affirm oneself as fate and fate creating power. This inner fate includes self determination also, in the sense of the pleasurable will struggle with ourselves, the conflict which we affirm as long as we interpret it as consciously willed self- creation, and not neurotically as the force of stronger supernatural forces or earthly authorities. (Rank, 1945, p.91-92).

In this way, both with the moral imperative and with the aesthetic phenomenon, the reason of the individual can offer meaning to what would have been only a blind and absurd fate. Now, instead of being a slave to the world of phenomena, the individual can take hold of his destiny, and truly make it a human destiny.

As we have seen in Nietzsche, all these things are not a benzodiazepine that needs to put the individual to sleep; in fact, they are a tonic that leads to action, for the truth that one can have of the world are the representations and their interpretations for the purposes of intensifying life—which are the beautiful appearance, or illusion. That is the only way to affirm life to the fullest. Among so many uncertainties in the sensible world, the individual must welcome the will to power that he or she has, which translates into believing in himself or herself, despite the fact that the individual is continually measured as inferior by the parameters of the dominant ideologies—the earthly powers:

The patient needs a world view and will always need it, because man always needs belief, and this so much more, the more increasing self-consciousness brings him to doubt. Psychotherapy does not need to be ashamed of its philosophical character, if only it is in a position to give to the sufferer the philosophy that he needs, namely, faith in himself. (Rank, 1945, p.96).

Bibliography

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Gaultier, Jules de. From Kant to Nietzsche. New York: Philosophical Library, Inc., 1961.

Kant, Immanuel. Crítica da Razão Pura. Translated by Manuela Pinto dos Santos and Alexandre Fradique Morujão. Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian, 2001.

Lieberman, E. James. Acts of Will: The Life and Work of Otto Rank. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993.

Machado, Roberto. Nietzsche e a Verdade. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2017.

Machado, Roberto. Nietzsche e a polêmica sobre o Nascimento da Tragédia. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2005.

Menaker, Esther: Separation, Will and Creativity: The wisdom of Otto Rank.

New Jersey: Claude Barbre, 1996.

Nietzsche, Friedrich: O Nascimento da Tragédia. Translated by J. Guinsburg.

São Paulo: Schwarcz, 2013.

Rank, Otto. Art and Artist. Translated by Charles Francis Atkinson. New York:

W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1989.

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Schopenhauer, Arthur. O Mundo como Vontade e como Representação.

Translated by Jair Barboza. São Paulo: UNESP, 2005.

Vaihinger, Hans. A Filosofia do Como Se. Translated by Johannes Kretschmer.

Chapecó: Argos, 2011.

The Weight of Philosophy in Otto Rank’s Psychoanalysis

Julio R. Costa

1. Introduction

Among the early psychoanalysts who, together with Freud, formed the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, Otto Rank, together with Hans Sachs, had a special position, in that he was not a member of the medical profession. Because he departed from Freud’s views on psychoanalytical theory and therapy, his work requires comprehensive analysis in order to further probe its acknowledged profundity.

Considering the fact that Otto Rank was the only member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society to hold a doctorate in Philosophy, we aim in this article to make clear how that field had a decisive impact on Rank’s ideas, and moreover, how Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Kant influenced his work.

Considering these philosophers, along with Freud, as having provided a broad foundation for his work, it may be said that Rank:

1. Accepted the fictional nature of human constructions, from Nietzsche;
2. From Schopenhauer, adopted the will as the foundation of the world and of human beings’ contact with the world; and
3. With Kant, considered the noumenon to be the locus of the being, such that ideologies and their social structures are doomed to fail and must, with the passage of time, be discredited; while the human person’s being is located in the Kantian noumenon, and therefore has a worth that can never be discredited.

2. An Overview of His Theory

Rank considered that the creative impulse in the individual, which contains in its core the will, propitiates a process in which people become more and more distinguished and differentiated. All this development unfolds through the individual, for as long as he fights, conquers, creates and interacts with others. Therefore, the individual becomes an affirmative agent, who learns and recreates the community’s values. In the process, the development of the will and progressive individuation tend to turn the individual, as far as permitted by the human constraints, into the creator of his or her own personality and, symbolically, the creator of himself or herself. This implies the individual’s intention to self-perpetuate, mainly symbolically, outlasting the ideologies of the different historical contexts and cultures.

These great systems of belief, which Rank called ideologies, eventually become ineffective and are discarded in the trash heap of history. However, the termination of every ideology causes no harm to the individual’s being, inasmuch as Rank, influenced by Kantian epistemology and ethics, placed the being within the noumenon – as will become clear below.

It should be pointed out that anthropologist Ernest Becker has offered the most widely known recognition of Otto Rank’s contribution. Becker’s theory deals with the cultural constructions necessary for the individual to confront his or her condition of finitude. To overcome a handicapping fear that arises from the awareness of one’s own constraints and eventual death, the human person, in his or her interaction with others, builds mechanisms that will preserve and enhance self-esteem and the ability to effectively interact in the social world. This viewpoint does postulate a consoling role of cultural elements, as a way of self-deception. On the other hand, we can see in Rank’s work the positive affirmation of will and meaning. In this article, we will focus on this positive aspect, understood as affirmation of life, which could, through philosophy, be seen as deriving from the primacy of the will, the fictional aspect of human constructions, and the person’s being as part of the Kantian noumenon.

Therefore, it is very relevant to an understanding of Rank’s psychoanalysis that all this replaces self-deception with affirmation of life and meaning.

3. Culture and the Being

It is important to highlight the fact that when Rank spoke of the different cultures and mentioned the diverse religions and symbolic systems of the peoples, he observed a respect for those social constructions and never debunked them or had recourse to irony. When he talked about cultures, whether Western or of a completely different tradition, he never once discredited them, like somebody who compares them with what he considers to be modern Western rationality.

A reading of Rank reveals to us a melancholic and stoic intellectual in his analysis of the heroic expression of the will deep within the person, in the being. In contrast, we see the fragility of the social expression of the being throughout history, due to the fictional nature of social constructions in the face of the individual’s will – which is the very foundation of life.

The question of the fictional nature of things is derived from Nietzsche, while the will, as the foundation of being, is derived from Schopenhauer. Kant’s “determine thyself by thyself” provides the ethical criticism in Rank’s theory, preserving it from Nietzsche’s scepticism and Schopenhauer’s pessimism while maintaining the critical nature of these authors’ views.

According to Rank, we must recognize that a human being needs to express his or her being, a differentiated being capable of interacting and integrating with a community. Furthermore, it is of fundamental importance that this program of being guarantee the perpetuation of those values that permit the expression of one’s subjectivity in the world. It should be stressed that what one is looking for is the perpetuation of the values of subjectivity and its dignity, with a degree of abstraction that will lead us to the Kantian noumenon.

Thus, what will be a problem for the being is the fragility and failure of the social constructions of perpetuation of subjectivity, which Rank designates as ideologies. Although also shared by the individuals, they are very close to established social structures, and eventually become ineffective in guaranteeing the symbolic perpetuation of the subject. We observe that the symbols that were pertinent for a culture, that provided an expansion of the being (here considered as the person), have needed to be replaced.

4. From Dogmatism to Criticism, via Scepticism and Pragmatism

Apart from some Schopenhauer’s influences, there was no metaphysics in Rank. However, what could easily be perceived was his estrangement from Freud, principally in relation to the materialism that the latter represented. Actually, that was Freud’s main distinguishing feature vis-à-vis the understanding of psychology at the time.

As pointed out by E. James Lieberman, Freud’s success lay in the creation of a system of investigation and comprehension that broke away from religious or supernatural ideas, i.e., from dogmatism:

Freud – atheist, neurologist, and former hypnotist – championed a psychology without spiritualism and metaphysics, in order to meet the requirements of the new scientific materialism, and called religion an illusion without future. Rank respected religion whether or not it is illusion. (Lieberman, in Rank, 1998, xviii).

At this point, we need to clearly understand how and why Rank respected the elements of culture, “whether or not they were illusions.” We see that psychoanalysis expressed an evolution from traditional dogmatism to the scepticism of Freud’s rationalism and scientific attitude.

The fact is that to be consistent with his own position, Freud would have had to discredit the traditional symbolic codes, considering them to be an illusion. What Rank was to do, to be consistent in his respect for culture “whether or not it is an illusion,” would be to take one step from scepticism to pragmatism, and move on to criticism. In this process, the scepticism was to be that of Freud, whom the young Rank had enthusiastically supported; the pragmatism, on the other hand, was to be that of Nietzsche. Finally, we have Kant’s criticism – where we may find the roots of what we could consider an ethics present in Rank.

Let’s start with the question of pragmatism. It says that we assume to be true whatever it is relevant to know. Truth is seen as agreement between thought and being. At certain times, however, this affirmation has been undermined and questioned. That was when the question of philosophical pragmatism (which grew out of scepticism), with its stress on the useful, was raised. In the quote from Lieberman, the idea of pragmatism is clear: whether or not it is an illusion, religion does have utility in human society. This was the attitude shared by Rank, and for him the roots of this idea of the value of utility were basically in Nietzsche. In addition, as representatives of pragmatism, we may cite Schiller and Vaihinger, in philosophy, and, in psychology, William James.

So what was it like, this pragmatism in Nietzsche? It is necessary to stress one point: according to Nietzsche, agreement between thought and being can never be achieved, because of human historicity. Self-awareness is the least developed “organ” in the human being. For living beings, who need to act to establish themselves in the world, the primordial force is not intelligence, but the will to power.

So the human being is a being who needs to act; only in order to act better does he need to think. Thus a judgement derived from thought becomes true to the degree that it conserves, expands and stimulates life. This then becomes the parameter of validity of a judgement – its practicality. According to Nietzsche, what we must evaluate is whether or not a determined truth judgement is at the service of the will to power, i.e., of the expansion of life.

It may be seen that Rank fully internalized the pragmatic point of view; the contents of culture do not need to have their validity confirmed per se, because the important thing is their utility in providing the person with a symbology of perpetuation, a basis for “being more”, in general.

However, Rank does not stop with pragmatism. If it is necessary to guarantee the expansion of being, it is quite natural for us to ask, what being are we talking about, if we consider metaphysics to be impossible? It is at this point that Kant’s criticism comes in.

Kant also experienced the passage from dogmatism to scepticism as a personal journey, mainly in relation to Hume, within British empiricism. While he did agree with Hume with regard to the contingency of knowledge – from which it was inferred that there never has been and never could be a metaphysics – Kant considered the ethical consequences of scepticism to be unacceptable. Actually, all German idealism (in which Kant included himself) found itself engaged in defending reason against the doubt and relativism of British empiricism. Kant, specifically, saw himself as driven to defend reason against scepticism, and this is very important for our understanding of Rank. Kant defines this as a critique of the very possibility of knowing, in order that speculative illusions, characteristic of dogmatism, might be avoided, along with the reduction of everything to experience, in the case of scepticism.

It is well worth returning to pragmatism in order to see how much of Kant can be found in Nietzsche, precisely in relation to the possibility of knowing.

5. Knowledge and Fiction

Nietzsche’s pragmatism focused on the life to be lived immediately; it was space without the infinite and time without eternity. It abandoned the metaphysics of Schopenhauer, to whom Nietzsche in his youth had referred as “my master.” Thus, in his early works, such as On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, the young Nietzsche had asked, “what can we know for sure about the world, and to what extent can we really know about the world?”

Nietzsche’s doubt already was very broad: how can we be sure that the world reveals itself to our senses as it really is? We are not as yet asking whether our senses are capable of perceiving the world, but rather if the world itself, understood as the true world, fully reveals itself. Furthermore, the world causes a nervous stimulus to our senses that may not exactly reproduce the external stimulus; this excitement will trigger a thought in the brain, and we do not know how faithful this thought will be to the nervous stimulus. And we do not know how faithful the word that expresses the thought will be to that thought.

Based on these perspectives, we can say that we only have approximations, or, in Nietzsche’s critique, collectively shared illusions. As he said:

What is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms, in short, a sum of human relations which were poetically and rhetorically heightened, transferred, adorned, and which after long use seem solid, canonical and binding to a people: truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; metaphors which have been used up and drained of sensory force; coins which have lost their image and are now considered as metal, no longer as coins (Nietzsche, 2014, p. 66.).

For us to understand pragmatism in Rank, it is important to discuss how strongly this doubting of the capacity to know saps the foundations of any system purporting to be absolute, with emphasis on the moral and the social. Nietzsche, however, followed this path to discredit not only social systems but also the very individual, to the extent that consciousness of oneself is extremely weak in relation to the forces of nature, and also because its constructions have no basis. When Nietzsche told us not to have any egoism, he meant that that which our consciousness thinks important for us is nothing compared to what the forces of life and nature are, as it were, planning for us, and that our will – the will to cultivate our fictional “I” – has no bearing on the flow of events. But Nietzsche also told us not to abandon egoism only to fall into altruism, for the will of another similarly has no power, in the grand scheme of things, on whatever life has reserved for him, – not to mention the fabrication that his supposed self-conscious awareness really does exist.

In the course of this paper, we shall see why Rank accepted Nietzsche’s critique of the absolute foundation of social systems, while at the same time rejecting his critique of consciousness and of a person’s being.

6. The Human a priori and the Noumenon

It was Hans Vaihinger who said that “there is more Kant in Nietzsche than one usually thinks”. In his opinion, this comes from that radical doubt regarding the capacity to know the world. This doubt, according to Vaihinger, originated from Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (2011), which discusses the issue of the phenomenon and the thing in itself.

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant analyzed the possibility of knowing, and, seeing knowledge as contingent upon the human a priori, challenged the possibility of a metaphysics, in the sense of knowledge of God, the world and the soul. One also must remember that Kant, as a philosopher of the Enlightenment, aimed at attacking all dogmatism.

But we need to understand how he intended to protect reason against skepticism using something that could support skepticism. The answer is in his later work Critique of Practical Reason, in which he laid the foundations of morals, introducing criticism as an alternative to both dogmatism and skepticism.

Kant sought an ethics that could be found by a man of the Enlightenment, in which the dogmatic, supernatural drivers of morals should be replaced by categories that could be rationally argued.

Kant’s reference to the “Copernican revolution” aimed precisely at showing the subject’s reason as the driver of knowledge of the object. The subject’s capacity to know dominates the object. We shall see that the fact that reason no longer bowed before the object of knowledge, always remaining faithful to its own laws and consistent with itself, was extremely important. Reason became law-giving reason. This was not so when the object dominated the subject and the latter’s act of knowing.

This development was necessary for Kant, due to dogmatism’s failure to apprehend reality, particularly through the metaphysical attempts intrinsic to dogmatism. One aimed to know in such a way that could be as effective and verifiable as the knowledge stemming from logic and mathematics. Kant thus had to study reason itself, its innate characteristics, rules and boundaries.

Kant posited that nature is always questioned by means of requirements already encompassed by human reason, that is, in a priori forms of knowledge. The human being knows the real through such forms, which exist a priori in reason, and which his capacity to know places above the data of sensory experience. Everything real is thus a human construct stemming from sensorial experience submitted to the a priori forms of pure reason. That which is beyond the reach of reason is the thing in itself, the ultimate reality, which the human being cannot know, but can think about through symbols.

Kant differs from metaphysical thought in that the subject and subjectivity have no “substance,” but there is a consciousness of oneself that accompanies every cognitive action and every conscious experience. These cognitive actions are established within boundaries that outline the experience of phenomena, for it is impossible for consciousness to have reference to that which is beyond phenomena (the thing in itself). But this consciousness of oneself has to be assumed. Accepting that we have no immediate experience of the objects of our senses, but only reach them through representations supplied by those possibilities already encompassed by reason, we conclude that consciousness of objects is no more or less worthy than consciousness of oneself, because they are simultaneous.

We must note that only the phenomenon, the world of phenomena immediately available to human beings, can be known. It can be both known and thought of. In contrast, the world of moral determinations is not the object of sensory experience; it can only be thought of. It is the world of the noumenon, separate from the phenomenon. Phenomena thus exist in the visible world, and the noumena in the intelligible world, which is supersensible. However – and this was very important for Kant – the supersensible world was not metaphysical or supernatural; it was a world that could only be conceived of by means of symbols that the reason needs to postulate. It is necessary within the realm of practical action, in accordance with reason; it becomes, therefore, moral action.

It is noteworthy that in this intelligible world, which is “comprehensible only in the moral aspect” and where all determinations are moral, Kant follows Plato’s ancient notion of a world of ideas (Kant, 2012, p. 107). Kant said:

Because we here treat (or judge) only ideas that reason created for itself, whose purposes (if any) lay far beyond our horizon, and because, even if we must assume them useless for speculative knowledge, they need not because of this be void in every sense, but the very law-giving reason puts them within our reach with a practical purpose, not for us to ponder on its objects, on what they are in themselves and according to their nature, but for us to think to the benefit of moral principles focusing on the ultimate purpose of all things (whereby these ideas, which would otherwise be utterly empty, receive objective practical reality). (Kant, 2012, p.112).

Rank said that the human being is a “theological being,” but he never discussed God, but rather culture in relation to the idea of God as a means for the perpetuation of the individual and his or her subjectivity. We could say that Rank used these concepts as if they were Kant’s regulative principles and Vaihinger’s fictions. This will likewise be reflected in the fictional character of human constructs in Nietzsche, in whose work we can also find the presence of the Kantian thing in itself:

We have to establish this principle: we live only by our illusions – our conscience emerges on the surface. Many things are hidden from our eyes. There is no reason to fear that man will come to know himself fully, that he will at every instant penetrate all relationships of strength … that are necessary for life. … They are only formulae for forces that are utterly unknowable. (Nietzsche, 2013, p. 349).

If we take these so-called illusions as the Kantian regulative principles, Otto Rank’s work takes on a new dimension. Kant saw the regulative principles as ideas that are not knowledge but rather establish guidelines and milestones for procedures in the act of knowing. Constitutive principles, however, lay the foundation for the objectives and possibilities of knowledge based on sensory data.

These fictions would also entail accepting as the noumenon the sphere where he places the being, in view of the respect with which he treats the subject – which Rank never discredits and whose sincerity he acknowledges.

7. Will, Affirmation and Autonomy

Although Kant made no room for metaphysics, Schopenhauer, even when criticizing Kant, created a metaphysics, by considering the will as the ultimate reality. It will be because of Schopenhauer that certain considerations approaching the metaphysical will appear in the work of Otto Rank.

Let us remember that in Kant, speculative thought (as expressed in the Critique of Pure Reason) recognizes the world of phenomena as its boundary and stops there, acknowledging that it cannot know the thing in itself. However, Schopenhauer saw the thing in itself as being the will, and thus pushed thought beyond that boundary, now seeing the will as the thing in itself.

Being a metaphysical concept for Schopenhauer, the will does not depend on anything biological; indeed, Schopenhauer avers that living beings came to existence to fill the void that the will contained in itself.

In his considerations on the human being, Schopenhauer stated that that which is not phenomenon in the individual is the will, and that the thing in itself also is the will. The will reveals itself through its representation, emerging as the world and being thus perceived by the subject – and this is why Schopenhauer thought the world is assured for the subject.

Schopenhauer’s concept of the will, as the foundation of the world of phenomena, is present in Otto Rank. Indeed, Rank wrote that the individual is

… the temporal representative of the cosmic primal force no matter whether one calls it sexuality, libido, or id. The ego accordingly is strong just in the degree to which it is the representative of this primal force and the strength of this force represented in the individual we call the will (Rank, 1978, p. 4).

One must here note that Rank really did take into consideration the human subject and the being, because therein, implicitly, lies the Kantian ethics. This takes us again to Rank’s common ground with Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, because this distancing of the being from the social and historical context becomes not only implicit, but necessary.

Thus, Rank reflects Nietzsche’s pragmatism in an amalgam with Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, in the primacy of the will in relation to consciousness and the intellect:

… will, guilt and consciousness maintain themselves differently, for the will, however one comprehends or interprets it, remains a constantly operating force, while consciousness above all is a quality, a state, and as such is passive and temporary, yes momentary (Rank, 1978, p. 90).

If Schopenhauer’s ideal was the annihilation of the will because it is the incessant compulsion that should not exist and causes pain, in Nietzsche one finds the enjoyment of the immediate power of life, without the need for any ultimate absolute or purpose.

Within this context, it may be said that Rank sustained

1. The neutral aspect of the primacy of the will;
2. The negative aspect of its compulsiveness; and
3. The positive aspect of the will as a pragmatic affirmation of life.

Furthermore, influenced by Kant’s Enlightenment aspects, Rank added his epistemology and ethics, so that we may add the following:

4. The self-determination aspect, whereby the individual transforms compulsion into liberty, guiding the will by means of a project of affirmation grounded in the being, which is considered as noumenon.

It is very important that at this point, the will is no longer subordinated to the phenomenon, but rather to the noumenon.

To illustrate the presence of Kant, let us focus, for example, on the issue of time as form. In Kantian epistemology, the matter of the phenomenon constitutes the sensation, and forms are the structures that make it possible to give order to the materials received from experience (Mora, 1996, p. 305). For Kant, time is an a priori form of the internal states of human beings, i.e., the form of the succession of representations in the human being as an arrangement of internal perception. It is conceivable that Otto Rank kept the Kantian concept of time as a form of conscience, while at the same time we can see in him the presence of Schopenhauer’s concept of compulsion as the origin of pain:

Therefore, from the standpoint of the psychology of emotions, consciousness shows itself as a time problem in the sense that time represents the form of consciousness and by means of this time factor makes the different contents pleasurable or painful. Will as the constant driving force strive accordingly to prolong its pleasurable perceived affirmation through consciousness, to make the feeling of happiness lasting, that is, redeeming. Insofar as this prolongation succeeds, it is perceived as painful because compulsory… (Rank, 1978, p. 89).”

As we can see, the inner states unavoidably change; for Kant, this is the very ground of our perception of time.

8. The Noumenon and the Contingency

One must understand that Kant had accepted Hume’s skepticism, but could not accept its moral consequences. Thus, what he deemed impossible to attain by speculative reason he attained by practical reason, permitting him to defend reason against skepticism. This made it possible for Kant to legitimately refer to the “‘homo noumenon,’ whose pilgrimage is in eternity (Kant, 2012, p. 114)” – and this without any metaphysics, only referencing the moral world.

Where does this touch Otto Rank? Exactly in the “ineffable spirit” mentioned by E. James Lieberman in the introduction to Rank’s book Psychology and the Soul, referring to the form Rank employed to deal with intangible concepts, which Freud, loyal to his scientific view, could only consider illusions.

The experience of the noumenon, pertaining to the moral world, is found in the regulative principles. According to Hans Vaihinger, the fictions mentioned by the early Nietzsche are equivalent to regulative principles, outlining the boundaries for understanding an inexact and ever flowing reality. Moreover, Denis Thouard remarked that the noumenon may be thought of symbolically:

Imagination appropriated this, compelled by an impulse that may be subjectively understood but cannot be objectively followed. These domains are left for myth, religion, literature, which are entitled to suspend reference (Thouard, 2004, p. 75).

For Kant, knowing and thinking are not equivalent. Phenomena may be known and thought of, but the noumenon can only be thought of. This brings momentous consequences. One might think that something that exists only symbolically should not be taken into consideration. To exist only as a symbol would be tantamount to not existing. But according to Kant, that which can only be thought of symbolically must be thought of symbolically, and will have a legitimate place in people’s lives. It is exactly in this manner that we can reach the supersensible world, where all determinations are moral and expressed by means of the symbolic life.

In this way, we can correctly grasp Rank’s attitude towards culture.

Otto Rank often stated that the human being wishes to escape from purely material and biological determinations in his quest for spiritual determinations. “Spiritual” here means the same as “cultural,” the fruit of the being’s choices in the universe of moral determinations, where human will can act. According to Kant, all of this alludes to the noumenon, not to illusion. The legitimate use of reason leads us to the noumenon, to the unconditioned; reasons allows us to think of it without the presumption – or the need – to obtain from it any sensory data, because the latter belongs to phenomena, while a moral law, which stems from reason, requires not the phenomenon but the noumenon.

Through the noumenon, Rank spoke to us of the being, which brushes up against the various ideologies of immortality, contingent on the different contexts of history, which have helped individuals to seek their own symbolic perpetuation. But the individual, as a being, does not depend on these ideologies to be, but rather to present himself to the world. The being remains unscathed, presenting itself as detached from social contexts, which are doomed to fail. And it is here that subjectivity will be protected: it concerns the noumenon and is not undermined by the world of phenomena.

It is important to make clear that only the being has a fundamental quality in the moral sense – which is important in Rank’s thought, in that the individual does not have to submit himself or herself to the phenomenon, given that one’s being resides in the noumenon. Only this can detach the individual from contingency; and this permits Rank to question the limitations of the several ideologies of immortality that have followed one another throughout history, without discrediting the human person and his or her being.

The importance of this notion of a “detached” being lies in its shedding of all aspects that could be mistakenly considered “essential” within the world of phenomena. In this sense, Rank followed Kant’s moral self-determination. In other words, human beings must be morally conditioned to nothing in the sensory world. The life-heightening and life-propagating property, and the ensuing affirmation of the being, reside not in any aspect of the sensory world, but rather in how the will expresses itself in order to attain this affirmation. We thus see that criticism has penetrated pragmatism.

9. Affirmation and Dignity

Using the very internal laws of reason, which are simultaneous to perception of the sensory world, a position of respect for human beings and their dignity becomes the correct one to take. Rank, in his narrative of the obsolescence of ideologies of immortality over time, in what he termed the “eternal drama of life,” at a certain point mentions a “lowering of the curtains” in the historical saga, when one can exist only in and of oneself:

The subjects of my former interest – the hero, the artist, the neurotic – all come back once more on stage, not only as participants in the eternal drama of life but also after the curtain has come down: unmasked, undressed, unpretentious. Not debunked by any means, just human, while I myself do not pretend to pull their strings, to tell them what to do and say, nor to interpret them to the audience (Rank, cited by Lieberman, 1993, pp. 387-388).

One may therefore say that Rank considers the being to be outside historical contingency, where human beings would exist even after “the curtains of the drama of life have come down,” where people would exist “naked, without masks, without pretensions,” and where they could be “just human,” and still in no way be discredited.

Only in the universe of the noumenon, where all determination is moral, can the human being reclaim his right to moral dignity, without the need for any self-deception. Likewise, this makes it possible to bring the experience of ethics into the world of phenomena, of contingency. Otherwise, if social life were a monolith of power and domination, each member of society would forever be an accomplice in his or her own domination, with no possibility for the exercise of reason to show another way; because a critique of power would be impossible for the faculty of reason.

Thus we may understand the degree of Rank’s wisdom in incorporating Kant’s epistemology and ethics, and thus placing the being of the human person outside of contingency. We also better understand the wisdom of Kant’s introduction of criticism, which makes it possible to avoid both dogmatism and scepticism.

Taking as our starting point the philosophers that influenced Rank to take his position, we may say that reason demands that the being be outside of contingency, remaining untouched by it; it needs to be where Kant placed the super sensible: in the moral universe. Finally, it becomes possible to acknowledge the importance of the human symbolic repertoire and its many manifestations, “whether or not they are illusions,” for human culture, meaning and values remain as affirmations so long as the being dwells in the noumenon.

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