FALLENNESS

To will is to will-to-be-master – Martin Heidegger

So far, we have kept our focus on Existential philosophy. However, there are valuable insights to be had when we study a few controversial ideas of the seminal psychologists. This is particularly true of the great Otto Rank, who served as the secretary of Sigmund Freud for twenty-two years.

In his groundbreaking book The Trauma of Birth, the great Otto Rank speaks about pre-Oedipal stages and how an infant’s vulnerable consciousness is disaffected and traumatized by its witless parents. He sketches out a theory delineating methods by which a person non-consciously attempts to return to the repose experienced in the mother’s womb. For Rank this regressive drive supersedes all other drives and subconscious needs, those described by Freud, Jung, Neumann, et al.

Published in 1924

This regressive urge is primarily the result of incompetent parents who fail to reassuringly introduce newborns to the Reality Principle, probably because they themselves hate reality.

Naturally, this return to the comfort of the womb cannot happen physically. However, as far as Rank was concerned, it can happen symbolically and psychically. Rank was of the opinion that what psychologists refer to as the “unconscious” can in one context be considered a womb metaphor.