The Psychology and Psychotherapy of Otto Rank

Otto Rank, an Austrian psychologist, was a protégé of Sigmund Freud, who saw in young Rank a gifted mind and drew him into his inner circle. The Psychology and Psychotherapy of Otto Rank is author Fay B. Karpf’s historical and comparative introduction to the theory and therapy of Otto Rank, his relation to Freud, Jung, and Adler and to significant developments in the fields of analysis, psychotherapy, counseling, education, and social work. Fay B. Karpf was one of the earliest Jewish American woman sociologists. Born in Austria in 1893, Karpf eventually immigrated to the United States, where she attended the University of Chicago. She immersed herself in the “Chicago School of Sociology,” and her first book, American Social Psychology: Its Origins, Development and European Background (1932), was a standard textbook in the field of social psychology. She studied with the psychoanalyst Otto Rank, and she later taught social work at the Training School for Jewish Social Work in New York. After the school unfortunately closed, Karpf moved with her husband to Los Angeles, where she became a practicing counselor and psychotherapist, and she continued contributing to the fields until her death in 1981.