Otto Rank

Ernest Becker described society as a symbolic action system designed to serve as a vehicle for earthly heroism. He advocates for a 'creative solution', which suggests that heroism can manifest itself objectively, through artworks. By further developing this idea (doubled by a Durkheimian perspective, and given that things can be people-like), I argue that some things can become heroic when being archived or put on display. Like heroic individuals, heroic objects are privileged things that distinguish themselves among stuff that goes unnoticed, while also being the central points of earthly heroic systems. Instead, heroic objects constrain the individuals to relate to them in a specific contemplative way, gaining cult value through exhibition. This used to be the case for relics and hero remains, but also the standard metre bar, which Marcel Duchamp cleverly ridiculed, underlining the contingent nature of cultural archived truths. Therefore, after broadly discussing heroic objects, I will narrow it down to the case of the standard metre and the readymades, further developing the idea of things becoming heroic objects.

Sergej M. Ejzenštejn was very much involved with psychology and psychoanalysis. He
was an important friend of Lev Vygotskij, founder of cultural-historical psychology, and of
Aleksandr Lurija, father of modern neuropsychological assessment: both Vygotskij and Lurija in
the early 1920s were among the supporters of psychoanalysis in Russia and members of the
Moscow Psychoanalytic Society. In Ejzenštejn’s writings on film language we find psychological
concepts of Vygotskij, such as “agglutination” and “internal speech”, that were present in the
theory of film editing. As far as psychoanalysis is concerned, Ejzenštejn was very much interested
in the concept of regression: the art lover, including the movie spectator, must regress and at the
same time activate the most mature part of the psyche. Ejzenštejn was friend of Hanns Sachs and
knew Otto Rank, Sándor Ferenczi, Franz Alexander, and Wilhelm Reich. In 1929 he gave a
lecture at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. In the USSR and in the USA he had two short
experiences of psychoanalytic therapy. [Keywords: Soviet cinema; Marxism and psychoanalysis;
Cinema and psychoanalysis; Lev Vygotskij; Aleksandr Lurija]

The goal of this study is to explore the development of Otto Rank's (1884-1939) philosophy through his shifting conceptions of heroism. The focus is specifically on the notion of Artist as the Hero. The investigation is conducted by performing a comparative study of Rank's thought with that of his two great mentors: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). The study employs various key concepts of Nietzsche – such as Apollonian / Dionysian dichotomy – to illustrate similarities and differences between Rank and Freud. Nietzsche acts here as a basis for comparison. This study argues that the psychologies of Rank and Freud – and their gradual divergence – can be seen as two different and unique answers to the challenge of nihilism, as expressed by Nietzsche with his conception of the Death of God and the cultural criticism that entails. It proposes that the notion of Artistic Hero in the philosophies of Rank, Freud and Nietzsche can be seen as a key concept, as they attempt to answer this dilemma. The study shows how the development of Rank's thought progresses from strict adherence to Freud's ideas to a point where he re-unites again with his early philosophical hero, Nietzsche, the artistic heroism acting as a connecting metaphor. The study elucidates how Rank uses Nietzsche to break away from Freud, and Freud, on the other hand, tries to perform a 'heroic escape' from Nietzsche's influence. In their quest for authenticity and new values, these three thinkers essentially create heroic myths of their own. Although the psychology of Freud and the philosophy of Nietzsche are well-known in both public and academic spheres, the same cannot be said about Rank, whose ideas still remain unknown and obscure to most. In its own small way, this study aims to rectify this situation by exploring 'Rankian' ideas. There is an added dynamism that comes from juxtaposing Rank's thought with Nietzsche and Freud's.

Trauma theory, especially associated with the works of Cathy Caruth and Judith Lewis Herman, is expressed by Sigmund Freud especially in his works Studies in Hysteria, Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Moses and Monotheism. According to him, trauma is the result of fright which is different from fear and dread. It is different because they both anticipate the danger, but fright is an abrupt experience. The repetitive feature of this unexpected fright is important as well. In this respect, the main problem is actually readaptation to life aftermath of the traumatic event. Otto Rank, a beloved student of Freud, takes this theory a step further and develops the Trauma of Birth theory, in which all the important points in the life of individual are directly associated with birth and father is of secondary importance. Incorporating these theories, D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers has sparkling characters like Gertrude, William and Paul each of whom experiences traumatic events. In this study, it is aimed to display and to examine the tragic but persevering efforts of the characters in the work to cope with the trauma in their own way.

Her şeyden önce bu metinde uyguladığımız yöntem, salt argümantatif hali ile meşruluk kazanacak bir nitelik kazanmaya yakın olmayabilir. Bunun sebebinin ise bizzat ilgilendiğimiz, olduğumuz ve detaylıca açıklayacağımız şekilde Homo Sapiens'in ta kendisidir. ''Böylece fert olarak alınan insanı bildirmek için, onun bir hayvan olduğunu söylemekten çok, bir insan olduğunu söylemekle daha çok bilgi verilir. Çünkü ikinci daha umumi olduğu halde birinci karakter fert olarak alınan insana daha hastır.'' 1 . İşte fikrimizin anlaşılmasında engel olarak gördüğümüz en büyük problem burada yatıyor. İnsana ait has(!) özellik... Bu problemi sadece Aristoteles'e yüklemek her ne kadar yanlış olsa da, sembolik olarak onu bir anmak istedik. İnsan kendisini cinsleştirip, türlerini teolojik-iktisadi sınıflardan yarattı. Aslında yüzyıllardır süregelen bir sorunu yine dile getiriyoruz: Madde-form bütünlüğü. İnsan, biyolojik ve dildüşünsel olarak bütün bir varlıktır ve cinsimiz sınırlarımızı, türümüz ise bu sınırlar içinde ayırt edici yetimizi belirler. Destan incelememiz, psiko-analitik yöntemimiz ve politik çıkarımlarımızın da hepsi bu önermeyi irdeleyecektir. Metinde savunacağımız ana argüman; biyokültürel bir varlık olarak insanın libidinal ve dildüşünsel yapısının, politik alan içerisinde varlığını sürdürmek için sürekli bir agonizma içinde olmasıdır. Birbirini yok edemeyen ve taşıyıcısı olan bütünü oluşturan bu iki unsurun sürekli çatışması tek tek insanların da -çatışmacı kuramın kabul ettiği gibipolitik yapıya sahip olduğudur. Bu bağlamda mikro mekanda politik olan birey ile makro mekanda politik olduğunu iddia ettiğimiz toplumun arasındaki ilişki, Gılgamış Destanının psikanalitik okuması ile yapılacaktır.

This is an essay in French published in the collective volume, "L'antijudaisme: a l'epreuve de la philosophie et de la theologie," in which I analyse the 'resistance to Judaism' from the psychoanalytic point of view, by creating a confrontation between Otto Rank, on the on hand, and Jean-Francois Lyotard, on the other.

Libri: Kitap Tanıtımı, Eleştiri ve Çeviri Dergisi'nde bulunan içeriklerin tümü kullanıcılara açık, serbestçe/ücretsiz "açık erişimli" bir dergidir. Kullanıcılar, yayıncıdan ve yazar(lar)dan izin almaksızın, dergideki kitap tanıtımlarını, eleştirileri ve çevirileri tam metin olarak okuyabilir, indirebilir, dağıtabilir, çıktısını alabilir ve kaynak göstererek bağlantı verebilir.

Freud, and Rank after him, believed in birth trauma. Winnicott contested it, and it may be thought, with those who could "relive" their birth, that the latter is an experience of pleasure analogous to going down the firemen's wool stocking, except when it is followed by the traumas of the premature cut of the umbilical cord, circumcision or imposed weaning. Both Otto Rosenfeld and Sigmund Freud having been the victims of circumcision, it can be thought that, for them, the birth trauma is a screen memory of a real trauma. If Freud was right to denounce the substitution of the Oedipus complex for the birth trauma with Rank, it must not be forgotten that the trauma of circumcision impedes the good overcoming of the oedipus.

This study of the recent "history" of hysteria, from Charcot to Freud, shows how Freud took up Charcot's crucial distinction between epilepsy and epileptoid hysteria, effectively creating a disorder with a distinct symptomatology. The disorder, as Breuer and Freud would also acknowledge, had to do with the "inscription" of memories in the body over time; thus hysterics suffered from "des réminiscences"--in addition to a "congenital weakness." I show here that the evolution of the concept of hysteria, from a condition shared by women and men (and, in line with the racism of the time: Jewish men who escape pogroms in Eastern Europe, notably), to a largely abandoned category of "my neurotica" (writes Freud as he abandons publishing case studies of hysterics), to one that, finally, does not map on to traumatic war neuroses. I examine the evolution of Freud's appraisal of hysteria and anxiety, showing how it passes from a "woman's disorder" (wandering womb) to a disease of traumatic memories (Freud, *Studies on Hysteria*), to a (largely female, anew) phantasmatic and intractable malady that cannot coincide with traumatism, despite the resemblance between the two psychological disorders. From there, I examine gendered logics in 19th century thought.