Otto Rank, Carl Rogers & Person-Centered Therapy
Relational Therapy: Moving to the Future from the Here and Now
The Humanistic Approach
In the 1950s a new school of psychology suggested itself to American psychologists Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, partly in response to the scientific theories made famous through the work of Russian physician Ivan Pavlov, and the research and practice of American psychologist B.F. Skinner – that came to be known as "behaviorism"– and partly in response to the scientific model of "psychodynamics" first described in Lectures on Physiology by Ernst Wilhelm von Brucke, and later developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud to suit his own unique field of interest.
The “humanistic” psychological approach of Rogers and Maslow would come to focus more on the present day – rather than on the traumas of the past – and to emphasize the exercise of will in choosing the direction of one's own life. Rogers described his approach from the outset as being “person centered,” and stressed the respectful and empathetic attitude of the therapist to foster a natural inclination to enhance the quality of one's life.
Revelation of Human Personality in Mythology, Symbolism and the Arts
It's clear that Rogers' thinking along these lines was greatly influenced by the work of the psychologist and philosopher Otto Rank, who for decades had been a very close colleague of Freud – and of the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and a few other select associates in Vienna who were interested in human personality. Rank had made several significant contributions from his area of study – in myth and legend and the nature of art – in Sigmund Freud's major work, “The Interpretation of Dreams” published late in 1899, which launched Freud's theory of dream "analysis" as a means of investigating the mind, noting the role of what is sometimes described as the "subconscious," in resolving internal conflicts resulting from past experiences, most notably those of early childhood.
Individuality and the Development of Relational Therapy
Following the publication of The Trauma of Birth in 1924, Rank eventually resigned from his post in Vienna, and spent a good deal of time in the U.S. and in Paris before eventually settling there with his family. Over time he introduced a practice of psychotherapy that focused more on present-day relationships, and on the exercise of individual will. Rank believed that the scientific approach of the behaviorists was too narrow, and took insufficient notice of our natural individuality.
In The Psychology of the Soul, Rank explains:
“[R]ealistic psychology is the death knell of the soul, whose source, nature, and value lie precisely in the abstract, the unfathomable, and the esoteric.“
At the invitation of Rogers, Otto Rank came to lecture on this new “relational” approach at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, where Rogers served as Director, and the publication of Rogers' books, The Clinical Treatment of the Problem Child and Counseling and Psychotherapy: Newer Concepts in Practice, both followed shortly thereafter. Essential aspects of his theory are described in Rogers' book Client-Centered Therapy, published in 1951; in Psychotherapy and Personality Change, which was published in 1954; and On Becoming a Person, in 1961.
Toward the latter part of his life, Rogers generously shared his work among communities in conflict, bringing together those with widely divergent experiences, often having experienced feelings of longfelt antipathy, to practice with one another the three most essential attitudes of his own therapeutic approach to resolving conflict in the 'here and now': clear communications based on an attitude characterized as being genuine, empathic and respectful.
Sources and suggestions for additional reading:
Carl R. Rogers, Client-Centered Therapy: Its Current Practice, Implications, and Theory, Houghton Mifflin (1951).
Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being, Van Nostrand Insight Books (1962)
Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, Pocket Books (1963)
