Otto Rank (1884 - 1939)
Like Jung and Freud, Otto Rank had a fascination with mythology, literature, art, and religion. He believed that myths are simply the expressions that
different cultures have given to common childhood experiences.
According to Rank, society has an elite class of creative individuals, generally known as artists (a term used to denote creative individuals of any discipline, and not just artists as most people understand the term). He believes that the artist is unique in that, unlike most other people, he
feels compelled to remake reality in his own image. At the same time, the
artist also needs the experience of immortality, which can only be achieved through the identification with the collective will of his culture, religion, or God (i.e., the identification with something greater than himself).
It is questionable how unique the artist really is, as Rank defined him. Many of the characteristics he attributes as unique to artists, such as their compulsion to remake reality in their own image, or their need to identify with something greater than themselves, or even their creativity, are in fact rather commonplace in society, differing mainly in degree of expression and realization. That being said, we may reinterpret Rank's artist as a particularly extreme combination of the above attributes. Also, Rank's definition of artist has much in common with what people normally identify as genius, the difference just being a matter of semantics.
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