Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development [Paperback]

Otto Rank (Author), Charles Francis Atkinson (Translator), Anaïs Nin (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 1989

"[Rank's thought] has implications for the deepest and broadest development of the social sciences . . . and of all [Rank's] books, Art and Artist is the most secure monument to his genius." —Ernest Becker

Along with Adler and Jung, Otto Rank was one of the intellectual giants in the inner circle around Sigmund Freud. Art and Artist, his major statement on the relationship of art to the individual and society, pursues in a broader cultural context Freud's ideas on art and neurosis and has had an important influence on many twentieth-century writers and thinkers, beginning with Henry Miller and Anais Nin.

Art and Artist explores the human urge to create in all its complex aspects, in terms not only of individual works of art but of religion, mythology, and social institutions as well. Based firmly on Rank's knowledge of psychology and psychoanalysis, it ranges widely through anthropology and cultural history, reaching beyond psychology to a broad understanding of human nature.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

About the Author

Charles Francis Atkinson was a writer and translator. He wrote English translations of works by Oswald Spengler and Otto Rank.

Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (September 17, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393305740
• ISBN-13: 978-0393305746
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 4.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #229,843 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rank's masterpiece, the culmination of his cultural analysis, August 24, 1998

By 

Ejames LIEBERMAN (Potomac, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development (Paperback)

Beginning with a monograph in 1907 that first brought him to Freud's attention, Otto Rank became his mentor's closest colleague until 1926. The present work, published in 1932, follows three earlier elaborations of the first monograph, and covers artistic endeavor, language, play, architecture, etc. through the ages as an expression of a striving for individual/communal immortality and a reconciliation with mortality. The creative type lives life, affirming the inevitable, while the neurotic is frozen with life-fear. A fine translation reads well but Ludwig Lewisohn's terrific preface has been replaced here with one by the lighter-weight but better-known Anais Nin. The book rewards study; see an excerpt on the Otto Rank Website.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, June 21, 2009

By 

Maria Horvath - See all my reviews
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This review is from: ART AND ARTIST: Creative Urge and Personality Development (Hardcover)

Otto Rank's book is among the most enlightening I have ever read. I am a 60 year old sculptor who has wrestled for years about the nature of this bizarre life of passion and production. This book actually has given me a truely satisfying understanding of the psychological landscape of the artist. And there are brilliant ideas about the fostering relationship between art and religion: surprisingly he sees art fostering religion and even the concept of the soul. And more: Rank shows that art is not the result of experience, but that artwork and experience both spring from the same creative urge of the artrist to create his life and independantly (of the collective) secure his immortality. I love this book. (fortunately I have been able to renew my library copy, since the copy ordered from Amazon is a month late)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars comprehensive and complete, June 2, 2010

By 

Robert D. Mounce "Doug Mounce" (MRFM Program, UW, Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development (Paperback)

Art and Artist is one of the best books I've ever read. I did a lot of ceramics in high school, and began majoring in art at a private liberal arts school, but didn't understand what I was doing while I was doing it. Later, studying history and philosophy, I found this book and it really brought everything together. The relation of an individual in the society is well illustrated in exhaustive examples, and the thesis that ideology dominates in art like inheritance does in evolution is thoroughly demonstrated. Rank includes an extensive survey in primitive society, explains the nature of genius, and includes plenty of pointers that I would certainly use if I was doing art as an artist.