Beyond therapy, Menaker discusses grander notions. Rank was aware that mortality is central to the human condition that the fear of mortality and the wish for immortality are governing principles in the life of each individual, and that we play out our individual bids for immortality through creation, procreation, and identification. The wish for immortality, argued Rank, is ultimately responsible for the development of culture and civilization as well. A compilation of twenty-two essays delivered in America between 1924 and 1938, it begins with a brief yet spirited foreword by Rollo May and a helpful and detailed chronology of Rank's life by Robert Kramer. Kramer, who selected, edited, and introduced these essays, offers indispensable scholarly guidance and clarification on 99 of the 275 pages.
Intrauterine ecstasy is interrupted by the agony of biological birth.
The results are threefold. First, we are born with Angst, an unconscious pain of difference between existence and nonexistence. Second, the trauma of birth undergoes a fundamental, primal repression. Third, our unconscious perpetually pushes us in a lifelong desire to return to primal paradise lost. Freud's was just one among many possible psychologies.