Embracing the Ambivalence: Otto Rank’s Complementary Approach and Its Relevance Today

Abstract

The existential psychoanalyst Otto Rank’s approach has not only shaped contemporary experiential and relational psychotherapy, but it is also useful to the continued development of theory and practice, both within humanistic psychoanalysis and existential-humanistic psychology. Traditional, mainstream therapeutic psychology has yet to expand on many of Rank’s most important principles, where process and relation are fundamental. Current outcomes in psychotherapy research indicate support for Rank’s strong focus on the therapeutic relationship. However, the quest is ongoing in terms of the constituents of the therapeutic dyad. In this paper, I focus on the here-and-now dynamics and the co-creative nature of the therapeutic encounter, tied to Rank’s notion of relationality. I introduce his idea of complementarity to exemplify how duality, pain, and ambivalence, are not only inevitable aspects of life but also vital to creativity, personal development, and growth. Using Rank’s work as a guiding principle, I contend that the goal of constructive therapy is not to overcome these expressions and possible blockages to authentic living but to transform underlying negative expressions into creative manifestation. This is partly done by embracing the diversity of experience; by surrendering to a realm between potential and actuality, client and therapist; and attuning to the so-called therapeutic third.

Current Research on the Therapeutic Relationship

There is a consensus across various psychotherapy orientations that the quality of the therapeutic relationship is a paramount factor for treatment efficacy (Campagne, 2014; Hubble et al., 1999; Kluft, 2002; Kullgard et al., 2022; Lambert & Barley, 2001; Norcross & Lambert, 2019; Ogrodniczuk et al., 2005; Wampold & Imel, 2015). According to the literature, the relationship itself accounts for about one-third of treatment outcomes (e.g., Lambert & Barley, 2001). The three main types of contemporary therapy, which are psychodynamic therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and existential-humanistic therapy, all demonstrate efficacy when they focus on the therapeutic alliance with the client (Burns & Burns-Lundgren, 2015). Even proponents of cognitive behavioral therapy are now attentive to the therapeutic relationship, although manualized procedures are still deemed essential (Okamoto et al., 2019).

While psychotherapy outcome research has long stressed the value of the therapeutic relationship, opinions differ on the relative contributions of various interventions. The working alliance is not a clearly defined construct but appears to include relational, collaborative, and expectation-related elements (Doran, 2016). So far, it has been argued that we need to learn more about how these relationships form and how they are impacted during therapy sessions (MacFarlane et al., 2015). Investigations are still ongoing to determine the precise mechanisms that cause for example therapeutic ruptures or breaks in the collaboration (Alfonsson et al., 2023). The culmination of that sort of research suggests that relational competence is crucial for psychotherapists to maintain to mitigate or repair breakdowns within the therapeutic connection (Eubanks et al., 2018, 2019).

Beyond the Toolkit

Otto Rank is greatly influential to modern therapeutic psychology, yet his contribution is undervalued. While the opinions differ somewhat in terms of Rank’s general influence, several scholars agree on his wide-ranging impact in terms of relational and interpersonal psychotherapy and often dub him the first relational psychoanalyst (Kramer, 2019; Menaker, 1982; Merkur, 2010; Rudnytsky, 2018). This article suggests that we can learn from Rank’s attentiveness to spontaneity, aliveness, and mutuality in the therapeutic situation. To focus on these aspects of the encounter may seem almost counterintuitive given our strive for methodological and clinical rigor. However, Rank is not alone in this approach: Wilfred Bion for example had a similar view. He maintained that as the internal worlds of therapist and client mix in therapy, an intersubjective field emerges (White, 2011). This means that aliveness permeates the encounter and that each session and client has a unique potential for different developments (Levine & Brown, 2013). The same idea is reflected on meta-theoretical levels. For example, while systematic procedure is an important part of scientific inquiry, several scientists, including the integral thinker David Bohm, ¹ have maintained that creativity and intellectual openness are key elements behind new discoveries (Biederman & Bohm, 1999). In extension, new ways of understanding matters prevent stagnation and can propel important paradigmatic shifts (Kuhn, 1992).

Spontaneity and transcendent mutuality are aspects of the therapeutic relationship that lie in a realm between the client and therapist, which I call the therapeutic third (I. S. Ekenstierna, 2024). Primarily, this concerns the aspect of relationships that do not necessarily proceed based on the goal-directed conversation between the individuals, but instead on attunement of a “meta-narrative of meaning” or an intermediate dimension (Frankl, 1969, as cited in Mutter & Neves, 2010, p. 8). Secondly, it is not based on either of the dialogue partners’ personalities alone. Rather, it is a feature of the relationship that occurs spontaneously in the present moment and, as such, transcends both parties of the therapeutic dyad (Buber, 1924/2021; Rank, 1929/1978a).

These transpersonal aspects of the therapeutic encounter are particularly complex. To make an objective statement about human experience that centers neither in person A nor B, but in an existential realm between person and person or person and world, has long been modern science’s great conundrum. Ongoing research explores how these dimensions of relation, pertaining to objectively unmeasurable experiences, can be integrated into the current scientific framework (e.g., Gregorini et al., 2025; Shapiro & Scott, 2019). This includes incorporating tacit or implicit forms of knowledge, also known as being-dimensions, which refer to transformational processes of uncanny quality, which are more existentially known, than cognitively apprehended (Bollas, 1987). Such experiences may take the shape of intuitive responses, synchronicities, nonverbal, and telepathic occurrences (Jung, 1916/1960, p. 421).

As Otto Rank observed a century ago now, patterns, categories, diagnostics, and systematic procedures, as then featured in Sigmund Freud’s, Alfred Adler’s, Carl Jung’s, as well as Rank’s own work, are useful only to a certain point (Lieberman, 1985). Distinguishing between theory and practice, Rank (1930a/2011) emphasized the importance of spontaneity in practice and saw a problem with standardizing elements of the relation that per their very nature are fleeting, spontaneous, and unpredictable. These aspects of the relation are not reducible to a template and lie beyond the toolkit, focusing on non-graspable moments of exploration, willingness, and surrender. When Buber ² (1924/2021) spoke of this, he said:

Going out to the relation cannot be taught in the sense of precepts being given. It can only be indicated by the drawing of a full circle which excludes everything that is not this going out. Then the one thing that matters is visible, full acceptance of the present. (pp. 77–78)

Bridging the Gap via the Existential Dimension

In its strive to be an accepted science, traditional mainstream psychology has largely dealt with the ambiguous field that constitutes the realm between objective and subjective aspects of human reality, by assuming a reductionist stance basically based on physics (Comfort, 1983). Subjective elements such as consciousness and experience tend to be reduced to brain/body/matter (physicalism or materialism). For example, psychological states and behaviors are explained by biochemical processes and imbalances in the brain. The opposing alternative, represented by some overly subjective phenomenological stances (idealism), often entails the omission of wider material reality and creative processes in the cosmos (see Shapiro & Scott, 2019). Such approaches tend to overlook important themes of embodiment and fail to recognize that where being beyond subject-object division transcends space and time, it is still spatial and temporal, in other words existential.

As Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962) pointed out, a person is always somehow situated in space and time, given the facticity of the body, our finitude, and eventual death. The body is the point of departure that extends subjectivity in the “horizontal dimension” as T. Fuchs puts it (2019, p. 90). This allows, on the more primal level that Rank discusses, for a bridging of the gap between hidden and overt processes (or conscious and unconscious) via the physical (see Foehl, 2014). This relates to what Rank (1924/1929b) called the region of the “psychophysical” (pp. xiii, 190) and what Kramer (2023) has coined the “existential unconscious” (p. 2). More concretely, it is possible to encounter the hidden or unconscious in physical behavior, in nonverbal communication, “in day-to-day living and in the structures of the person’s lived space” (T. Fuchs, 2019, p. 90). As Foehl (2014) describes it, the person (as a whole, in a body) is “the third point of connection between form and field” (p. 292). Process lies in the shifts “between the figural and its context” he writes (p. 291). This perspective or depth (compare depth psychology) “captures both the separation or distance between me and my world and the fundamental connection and interpenetration with the world” (p. 292).

This way the existential dimension bridges the gap between objective and subjective dimensions. Rank’s later, transitional (1924–1926) and post-Freudian work (1926–1939) postulates such an idea and constitutes a third alternative situated between Kantian and Empiricist perspectives ³ (I. S. Ekenstierna, 2024).

Rank was part of Sigmund Freud’s inner circle for two decades but dissented from classical Freudian psychoanalysis in the mid-1920s. He proceeded to lay a foundation for our modern relational psychodynamic practice, and more specifically time-limited and experiential approaches (DeCarvalho, 1999; Merkur, 2010; O’Dowd, 1986; Rudnytsky, 1991, 2018). Links between Rank’s ideas and Freud’s (1895/1950) early (and possibly more relational) work implicitly connect Rank to important theorists such as Donald Winnicott (Rudnytsky, 1991) and Wilfred Bion (Aguayo, 2013). Rank also influenced existential-humanistic psychology including transpersonal branches (Amundson, 1981; Kramer, 2019, 2023; Lieberman, 1985; Menaker, 1982). His seminal theory of will and his affirmative- rather than pathologizing understanding of human experience underly contemporary explorations of agency and self-creation, and contributed to the human potential movement in the United States (DeCarvalho, 1999; Ellingham, 2011; Kramer, 1995, 2023; Kripal, 2007; Lieberman, 1985; Mitchell & Black, 1995). Taft (1933), May (1940, 1958), Rogers (Meader & Rogers, 2008), Yalom (1980), and Grof (1985) are some of those who bodied forth modern (re)interpretations and real-world applications of Rank’s framework (see also Schneider, 2023b).

Rank and the early influential figures in phenomenological and existential psychiatry and psychology recognized the contributions and applicability of psychoanalysis in certain aspects and cases but were skeptical of psychoanalysis’ theory of the human being overall (May, 1958). They felt that it lacked the existential factors of human becoming; factors that implicate dichotomous qualities, challenges and uncertainties inherent in life, as well as integration, synthesis, and wholeness (Cooper, 1990). In the early 1920s, Rank began to collaborate with Sándor Ferenczi, another member of Freud’s inner circle, to discuss principles that diverged from classical psychoanalysis (Grosskurth, 1991). Rank’s innovative work with Ferenczi represents some of his initial steps beyond Freudian psychoanalysis toward existential-dynamic psychology, which is both scientific and philosophical. The crystallization of their ideas would occur in Rank’s 1924 book The Trauma of Birth, while a clear formulation of his therapeutic approach is presented in Will Therapy, published in 1929.

Leading up to that point, Ferenczi and Rank (1923/1925) questioned the strong focus on interpretation that guided Freud’s model, positing that therapy is far from merely an intellectual pursuit. They also opposed the causal assumption on which Freudian analysis was based, meaning, it tended to reduce matters to the individual’s past, consequently devaluing the lived experience in “the here and now” as Rank famously phrased it (1929/1978a, p. 39). Rank (1996) later spoke of the actual experience as the indwelling potential of a person’s “present life” and its significance (p. 228). Lived experience is not reducible to thought or affect but is rather “a mode of apprehension characterized by its immediacy, holistic, contextual and bodily nature” (Bohart, 1993, p. 51).

Relation in this view is thus also more than biological determinants, one’s past, one’s parental connections, and internalized representations. It is not merely a means to, and a result of, self-becoming, but rather something alive and dynamic that forms the transcending space for self-actualization. In Rank’s view, relation includes the human being’s interpersonal relationships, its relation to itself, to culture, and also to the cosmos at large. It thus bridges the object-subject and mind-body split, at the experiential level.

Self, to Rank, is the point where the psychological being, as Progoff (1956) put it, “touches the cosmos, or begins to perceive, at least, that such a transpersonal contact is possible” (p. 185). In this sense, Rank diverges from Cartesian dualism which rightly testifies to a recognition of “two aspects” of the human: res extensae (matter) and res cogitans (mind) yet conceives of these as fundamentally disconnected from one another (Cottingham, 1992). Rank conceives of unity throughout physical reality (Merkur, 2010). The link that exists between the self and “the Beyond” as Rank (1932/1968, pp. 49, 113) called it, is a link sustained throughout a person’s life, even after the separation by biological birth, and in infinity after its death.

But the point of connection between person and world is still perceived as dual in a sense: it entails both transcendence and pain. Pain, in such regard that our traumatic “separation” from the whole through biological birth, casts us into a lifelong conflict. And, transcendence, in that the conflict then becomes a fertile ground for creative urge, growth, and transformation. The conflict consists in the fact that we want both the oneness or unity once had, and to be self-assertive independent individuals, as Becker (1973) described so well. This way we are also inherently afraid of both alternatives (referring to the so-called death- and life fear). ⁴

The Daimonic, Eros, and Thirdness

Rank investigates the dialectical interplay between the hidden and overt, between our unity with the cosmos and others, and our simultaneous separateness and individuality. He explores finitude versus the eternal; self-creation versus self-negotiation; will versus counter-will; and living versus understanding. He is, as I have suggested a double-aspect theorist (I. S. Ekenstierna, 2024). He drew on the Heraclitean ⁵ idea of coincidence of opposites ⁶ where opposing forces assume unity: in Rank through a third which is creativity (see I. S. Ekenstierna, 2024; Rank, 1924/1929b, 1932/1968; Spencer, 1975).

Rank’s comprehension of the existential paradox, where he views creativity as emergent from the tension between opposing forces (such as will feeling and guilt, or the poles of fear), inspired for example Irvin Yalom. Yalom (1980) considered the dialectical understanding of life anxiety and death anxiety, and the continuous movement between the poles, a meaningful conceptualization that “supplemented” the Freudian theory (p. 74). ⁷ May’s (1940) book The Springs of Creative Living is another example tied in with this part of Rank’s theory. And the same core concept was bodied forth in May’s work on the daimonic in Love and Will (1969/2001) and The Courage to Create (1975).

The daimonic can be understood as the source in the human of the positive and the negative emotions (Diamond, 1996); arising as experiences from within, even though it does not emanate from the self as such but from intermediate realms (microcosm-macrocosm). From von Franz’s (1980) interpretation, it can be inferred that the daimonic relates specifically to the experiences through which humans perceive occurrences to be self-transcendent, that is, extending beyond personal boundaries, lifeless materiality, concepts, and constructs, to the cosmic and ineffable. This way the daimonic is also more broadly the dynamic ground of existence and the source of psychophysical vitality (May, 1969/2001). Grof and Grof (1980) were inspired by the deeply intertwined themes of life, birth, love, sex, and death, present in Rank’s work. Grof (1986) in his publication Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy, notes that Rank influenced his transpersonal psychology.

As humans, perhaps our most relatable experience of the daimonic is through our various encounters with eros; the more passionate, partly idealistic love. Eros is sometimes used interchangeably with daimonic; a term which has been given varied meanings throughout history and depending on tradition, ranging from unifying to dividing, and from self, to primordial, to personal god (Agamben & Heller-Roazen, 1999; Leeming et al., 2010; Online Etymology Dictionary, n.d.). We are implicitly in touch with an intermediary dimension through the very nature of eros itself. Honoré de Balzac expressed this well: “Love is the reduction of the universe to the single being, and the expansion of a single being, even to God [or creative nature]” (Balzac, as cited in Kahn, 1914/2011, p. 18).

As May (1975) observed, love and anxiety are inseparable. There are many reasons why this is so. As Canadian poet and classicist Carson (1986) explains “The presence of want awakens in [the lover] nostalgia for wholeness” (p. 31). For this reason, the experience of eros also alerts a person to a sense of lack. It makes us aware of the boundaries of ourselves, of others, of things in general. Because while a momentary sense of unity is possible, it is impossible to fully dissolve the boundary of the self. Buber (1951/1957) explains in his essay “Distance and Relation” how for something to enter into relation, that is, to exist beyond something, it must first be set at a distance. One can enter into relation only with that which has become an independent opposite. This twofold principle as Buber calls it, can in the first instance not be established intra-psychically, in the human’s inner life, “but in the great phenomena of its connection with an otherness which is constituted as otherness by the event of ‘distancing’” (p. 97). “Distance provides the human situation, relation provides [a person’s] becoming in that situation” Buber clarifies (p. 100). Nature, or external reality, offers us the act of contrasting, but we find the same principle in the workings of human relations. Eros can be understood as dependent on the paradox of closeness and distance. This idea is expressed in the following Carson (1986) quote: “A space must be obtained or desire ends” (p. 26). As Buber (1924/2021) puts it “[L]ove cannot persist in direct relation. It endures, but in interchange of actual and potential being” (p. 17). “In the interval between reach and grasp, between glance and counterglance, between ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you too,’ . . . desire comes alive” (Carson, 1986, p. 30).

The triangulation that occurs by movement and shifts of distance, makes both the actual and the potential present. This indicates a transcending space: something that exists outside of the characters yet “moves” in and through them. This is a feature also of the therapeutic third.

The Unifying Factor of Creativity

The daimonic is that vitality that pushes a person beyond the temptation to escape into anxiety-free zones, such as sex-based relations or non-commitment (May, 1975). To push through the anxiety, toward love, demands a conscious pursuit (in therapy and in life). Creativity, May writes, is “the encounter of the intensely conscious human being with his or her world” (p. 54). By consciousness he does not mean intellect alone, but rather an awareness or a way of being “with the world on a level that undercuts the subject-object split” (p. 54).

This links to Rank, who sees a (temporary and ongoing) uniting factor in a person’s creative potential and will, and the transformational processes of art, love, and sexual connection. Sexuality is “the most universal symbol for the fulfillment of the will” according to Rank (1929/1978b, p. 58).

The foundation of Rank’s personality psychology is his characterization of three fundamental personality types: average, neurotic, and productive, where creativity features as a constituent of self-becoming (Rank, 1932/1968). The productive person is historically the precursor to the artist or the creative type, and in other words a type of “modern-day hero” (Spencer, 1975, pp. 5, 7).

Most people live following social norms and general behavioral patterns. As Rank posits in Beyond Psychology, the dual nature of human existence compels the average person to submit to the will of the group, and they only take part vicariously in these acts of creative rebellion or defiance through which the heroic type lives “beyond” the “accepted psychology or ideology of [its] time” (Rank, 1941/1958, as cited in Spencer, 1975, p. 6). To dare to transcend the standard maps demands courage, as Sharon Spencer notes.

The person of average will, according to Rank’s typology, has and fulfills a less burning need for individual expression, which allows them to maintain the existing characteristics of their culture and ideals. As Kainer (1984) notes, this type of person does not seek creative development, or “to go beyond that which already exists” but manages to lessen the potential for neurotic conflict (p. 367).

The neurotic type has a stronger personal will than the average person, but because they are afraid to put it into practice, they become stuck between their guilt and their fear of dying as well as living. Rank (1932/1968) refers to this type as the blocked artist; the “artiste manqué” (French for “failed artist”) (p. 25). The imposed obligations of life (both the self-imposed and those relating to one’s co-existence with others), are what block the individuation process and the ability to carry out self-created ideals (Kainer, 1984).

The third type, the artist, rejects the will of the group, partly in its defiance of death, or as Spencer (1975) phrases it out of “a fear of death” (p. 7) which relates to Rank’s re-interpretation of the (Freudian) death instinct. To Rank the fear of death as we know it on the explicate level (empirically), is the fear of loss of the individual self (Kainer, 1984; Rank, 1929/1978a, p. 155). However, Rank makes a distinction between the “neurotic” death fear and the corresponding belief in “immortality” (p. 121), where the strive to “immortalize” oneself (in durable material) is more closely associated with the artist type (Rank, 1932/1968, p. 141). The following quote by Buber (1951/1957) describes the micro-macro mutuality involved (and the uniting quality of creativity):

Art is neither the impression of natural objectivity nor the expression of spiritual subjectivity, but it is the work and witness of the relation between the substantia humana and the substantia rerum, ⁸ it is the realm of “between” which has become a form. [footnote added] (p. 101)

The artist mistrusts and maybe even rejects procreation in favor of productive acts that allow them to reproduce two things: first, a self-expressive version of themself, and second, the artistic and intellectual creations that represent their unique vision of reality (Spencer, 1975). There is in those manifestations also the ability of the artist to make a beneficial contribution to society, or perhaps even foresee such a contribution.

Creative will is the means by which a person temporarily resolves the conflict of duality. Specifically, the conflict between separation and union. Between the death fear (fear of dissolvement or loss of individuality) and the life fear (guilt and fear of self-actualization). And also: between biological birth and death, and the timelessness of one’s existence. Rank (1932/1968) wrote:

[M]y feeling is insistent that artistic creativity, and indeed the human creative impulse generally, originate solely in the constructive harmonizing of this fundamental dualism of all life. I arrived at this conception by a concentrated psychological study of the two human types which most clearly reveal success and failure in this struggle to overcome: the so-called neurotic type, and the creative. [emphasis added] (p. xxii)

Kainer (1984) explains that the acceptance of the will to individuate and the creative construction of the personality (the will to create the unique self) is necessary for the overcoming of life fear and its potential for neurosis in some strong-willed types. In terms of death fear, one must first acknowledge the “facticity” of death as a necessary part of life to try to overcome it (p. 365). “Some individuals are able to minimize the influence of the death fear through identification with the enduring aspects of the culture, or the creation of a product of the self” (p. 365). Although neither of these approaches eliminates “the sting of death” they both fulfill the ancient desire for an “enduring self which transcends time” (S. Gourevitch, 1984, as cited in Kainer, 1984, p. 365).

The neurotic person (i.e., a person susceptible to anxiety, depression, self-doubt, and other negative emotions) is, again, as Rank (1932/1968) phrased it, the “artiste manqué” (p. 25). We shall keep in mind that Rank uses the words art and artist both to describe their obvious meaning and in the broadest sense the art of living. Thus, the “artiste manqué” is the creator who wants to create but is blocked, and who cannot transform their conflicts into art, into vital living (see also Wadlington, 2012). Growth, on the other hand, occurs as long as the individual remains engaged in struggle, self-assertion, creation, and interpersonal interaction. The creative individual is “impelled to move forward” (Kainer, 1984, p. 363) in the structuring of self-perception and in the creation of the personality “as an artwork of the self” (p. 371).

Participation Versus Fragmentation in Science and Philosophy

The centrality of creativity in Rank’s framework extends into a notion of therapy as a co-creative venture. Parallels exist between the artistic and the therapeutic process, where, in the artist’s creation of works of art and the client’s re-creation of themselves, the therapist becomes a muse for the client; the artist (Kainer, 2013). Being an avid reader, Rank draws on both Early Greek- and Classical philosophy to reach these conclusions, as well as on modern physics. While his incorporation of philosophy constitutes a unique contribution to early psychoanalytical theory, ⁹ it does not detract from Rank’s scientific relevance. The strong relationality that Rank propounded harmonizes with implications and results from modern psychotherapy research (see introduction). More so, Rank (1930a/2011) derived some support for his relational understanding from relativity theory and quantum mechanics. Based on his own observations and those of physicists such as Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, Rank posited that in daily life and interpersonal relations the experimenter, or the therapist, is part of the “observation” rather than separate from it. This line of reasoning is based on quantum holism (or quantum nonlocality) where the fact that the entire universe consists of invisible, unbreakable links, includes the observer and the observed, the atom and us (Bohm, 1980).

Prior to the revolution in modern physics, what I call post-participation Europeanist philosophy and reductive science were yardsticks of the universe and our place in it. While Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei had no psychological or psychiatric intentions, as Comfort (1983), Kauffman (2007), and many others have pointed out, the perception of the human condition was altered, partly with their innovations, as these influenced general human awareness. 19^th-century mechanism and Newtonian physics clearly separated observers from the realm of the observed, and this separation was further cemented with the Cartesian separation of mind from matter or body. Until the 1920s, the reductive order based on object-subject division was largely undisputed and coherent: it concerned a world of atomic structures imposed by different systems of complexity (e.g., the evolution of biology, neurostructural explanations, and models of mind), but advancements in physics began to challenge these established conceptions. First Einstein’s (1916/1920) special and general theories of relativity, which he presented in papers published between 1905 and 1950, and which fundamentally changed the philosophical theory of space, time, and matter. Instead of the Newtonian notion of time as a constant entity, Einstein posited that time is relative to the observer and needs to be discussed as spacetime, which is determined by specifying the distribution of matter and energy distribution (field equations). Einstein’s theory this way introduced the idea of fundamental relationality in science. Following that, quantum concepts such as superposition and entanglement implicated a complementarity of determinacy and indeterminacy, or between order and unpredictability. ¹⁰ Entanglement suggests that particles that are in a state of interconnectedness are bound together regardless of distance, and reflect a deep, hidden order of underlying unity in the universe, related to Rank’s notion of the Beyond ¹¹ (see S. Ekenstierna, 2025). Superposition, in which particles exist in multiple possible states simultaneously until observed, reflects the unpredictable, chance-based nature of reality. ¹² To Rank (1930a/2011), like particles in physics, the individual also partly lies “beyond lawfulness” which means that it cannot be “fully comprehended or explained by causality either of natural or social science” (p. 175). Combined, these observations profoundly challenged and broadened the foundations of the traditional scientific paradigm (the Newtonian/Cartesian epistemological framework), by illuminating how seemingly contradictory phenomena are present simultaneously throughout reality. More so, it introduced choice or free will into the equation.

Several philosophical constructs have challenged reductive assumptions in similar ways that modern physics now does. The idea that the “two worlds” of inner and outer, mind and matter, as opposed to being independent, are abstractions of a fundamental and unified domain, has been expressed philosophically previously across a wide range of traditions. More recently in Martin Heidegger’s notion of Dasein (being-there). More so, early indigenous cultures seem to have presumed a deeper dependency between person and world, mind and matter, also known as participation mystique (Lévy-Bruhl et al., 1923).

As Rank attempted to broaden and deepen the narrow scientific frameworks of his time, ¹³ mainstream psychological science is (still) not sufficiently receptive to the paradigm shifts currently underway. It has also not made sufficient use of valuable philosophical explorations of human reality (which when recognized have a bearing on mental health and ill-health respectively). With recourse to Cartesian dualism and linear notions of causality, the discipline still succumbs to reductive solutions to these paradoxical sides of reality (Kauffman, 2007).

Dualisms often include a distinction between the human and creative orders, person and nature, and matter and mental life, as ways to “solve” the intricate question of how and in what way seemingly distinct phenomena nonetheless are related. This type of reasoning predates René Descartes—with binary oppositions emerging in Greek antiquity—and is too complex to attribute to a single theoretical innovation (Lloyd, 2017). Rather than pointing to certain historical occurrences as the direct causes of the shifts that gradually have created the current predominately dualistic tendency, ¹⁴ Bohm’s (1980) concept of fragmentation broadly explains the development. Fragmentation is a form of reductionism, sustained by people’s general ways of thinking. The mind externalizes reality into polarized positions (Bohm, 2013), where human experiences, instead of being understood as organic wholes, are seen as reducible mechanisms that can be understood by analyzing the parts. The opposite approach: participatory thought, recognizes instead that the external and the internal, object and subject, act upon each other, and that reality at the very vanishing point is undifferentiated. The subtle but critical tendency of our general forms of thinking in maintaining fragmentation has as Bohm observes, evolved in humans over the ages.

Between Objective and Subjective Psychology

The idea that mindset has an impact on the nature of our observations seems simple enough but is in fact profound, and made a difference in terms of how the mature Rank understood the therapeutic situation. How we perceive and experience the world, ultimately determines how we want to act (Bohm, 2013). In Rank’s (1930a/2011, pp. 1–12) discussion about objective versus subjective psychology, he attributes a problem with psychology to the fact that the human is inclined toward projection, which is related to objective psychology, wherefore introspection, related to subjective psychology, entails a logical contradiction. Since introspection tends to interfere with our projective, spontaneous action, psychology’s subjective side is not a useful tool for self-knowledge, according to Rank. Self-becoming is according to Rank more about being a self-aware person in relation to oneself, to others, and “the cosmic process” (Rank, 1932/1968, p. 376, 1929/1978a, p. 58). In addition, it is a matter of self-creation.

The dilemma concerning introspection relates back to the paradoxical nature of the relation between the observer and the observed. On this matter Bohm (2013) explains that when I set out to reflect on myself inwardly, my assumptions are not being looked at, hence the assumptions are acting like an observer. If I as an example attempt to get to the bottom of my tendency to fall for unavailable people, somewhere in the process there is someone who observes what is problematic, but that someone is not being observed. Bohm asserts that because the very failing parts I should be examining—such as that I may not be ready for a relationship—are hidden in the one looking, the looker, I, will not find them. This ultimately means that the observer is the observed, from which it follows that at a certain stage, there exists no clear boundary between the two (Bohm, 2013).

This is one of the main points on which Rank diverges from classical psychoanalysis (Menaker, 1982). To Rank, we are not entities driven by biological impulses and instinctual drives determined to unfold as in early Freudian psychoanalytical thinking (Bühler, 1965; Frankl, 1966; Menaker, 1982). Or, organisms that react to stimuli, accordingly to behavioristic views (Reynaert, 2009). Nor are we confined to some of the counter-positioned humanistic motivational theories, where personhood is understood as a closed system, concerned with the actualization of the own, individual self (Bühler, 1965). Rank (1930a/2011) proposed instead a holistic approach, which navigates between objective and subjective psychology. Part of this is reflected in his understanding that human existence is best approached at the interface of physics (matter and macrocosm) and psychology (mind, body, and microcosm). Existential philosophy in turn seems to function as a medium in his transdisciplinary inquiry, or as a way to unify different aspects of human reality without reducing psychology to physics itself.

Co-Creation

A key takeaway from Rank’s inquiry into modern physics is that applied to psychology and interpersonal relations, Rank (1930a/2011) comes to term his approach a “relativity psychology” (p. 172). Or “a science of relationships and relatives” (p. 195). Referring among other things to an “individual causality” which Rank connects to the theory of relativity, Rank noted that “every observer sees and comprehends things from [its] own individual standpoint, and thus has . . . [its] own ‘truth’” (p. 173). However, that “truth” is in some shape still “determined spatio-temporally or dynamically,” though in psychology relative to “events and their intervals” instead of as in physics “bodies and their distances” (p. 173). Therapeutic work has no fixed standpoint, he holds, “but only a momentarily given relationship between the experimenter and the person studied [observer and observed] whose closeness varies dynamically at all times” (p. 172).

This is a decisive move away from determinism, toward an understanding of determinism and indeterminacy as complementary. ¹⁵ The interplay between the two is clear from Rank’s (1941/1958) final book, Beyond Psychology, where he states that “[E]xplanatory psychology has to trace the causal links beyond the individual to its social and collective sources [including cosmos] in the remote past, where the basic conceptions of human culture and personality originated” (Rank, 1932/1968, p. 53). At the same time, Rank makes clear that “Therapy . . . has to be based on the individual’s will as an autonomous force operating beyond and above heredity and environment” (p. 53).

In the vein of Bohr, this introduces the idea that we humans participate in how the manifest or objective world is constantly coming-into-being (see Rickles, in press). Bohr articulates this idea in a series of essays written between the late 1920s and late 1950s. He acknowledges that, in our strive for meaning and balance in life, we must not forget that “in the great drama of existence” we ourselves are simultaneously players and spectators (as cited in Heisenberg, 1958, p. 58). As Bohr (1963) also notes, this epistemological problem already concerned early Eastern philosophers such as Buddha and Lao-Tzu.

Inspired by Bohr, and much like William James, ¹⁶ Rank assumes a “possibilist” approach (on James: see Atmanspacher & Rickles, 2022, p. 83). This means that will and agency are undeniable factors in the appreciation of the individual and its context. Observers in James’ view— “experimenter[s]” in Rank’s terminology (1930a/2011, p. 172)—are involved as agents in the very process of creating reality and their lives through acts of will. A scientist with a likeness to James, John Wheeler, called agents participators and argued that “The observer-participator transforms conceivability into actuality” (Wheeler, 1980, p. 5, as cited in Atmanspacher & Rickles, 2022, p. 83).

This is an emerging topic in quantum physics and philosophy, where recent approaches that draw on David Bohm, Wolfgang Pauli, and John Wheeler, and the core conception of this type of reasoning—also known as participatory realism ¹⁷ —include Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM). RQM was developed in 1996 by Carlos Rovelli and entails that a quantum system’s state is relational: it is the relationship between the observer and the system, and information is a correlation (Laudisa & Rovelli, 2024; Rovelli, 1996).

Applied to a human science such as psychology, this has far-reaching implications. If we co-create with the world at large, we have perhaps greater power of impact on our lives than so far has been established (Rickles, in press). The recognition of agency further suggests that the therapeutic encounter is fundamentally co-creative. If therapy is entirely co-creational, the realm between client and therapist raises particular interest.

The Terra Incognita of Therapy

The recognition of the experiential dimension and the present meant that relationality took precedence over psychoanalytic thinking which previously and still at times, distinguishes the therapist and the client as separate subjects who, as Ogden (1994) expresses, “take one another for objects” (p. 3). As Buber phrased it, the therapist is not working on the client from a distance, rather, it is itself involved in the process and open to the possibility of being changed by the present (as cited in Rogers et al., 1989). The therapist’s agency can enforce a goal-directed outcome. At the same time, its attuned involvement and surrender to the present, can in a given situation occasionally enable outcomes that an overly directed intervention would not be able to provide. The therapeutic third lies in the interplay between these two positions (I. S. Ekenstierna, 2024).

The unpredictable nature of the present further illuminates, as Buber (1999) expresses it, the “element of the unexpected” that pervades the therapeutic encounter, and which often contradicts prevailing theories and techniques (p. 19). Such a situation demands “the ever-renewed personal involvement of the therapist” (p. 19). As noted, Rank (1930a/2011) also makes a distinction between theory and practice, where practice importantly involves an element of “spontaneity” (p. 174). Conceptions and knowledge do not lead directly to therapy and are “certainly not the therapeutic agent[s] for the patient” Rank maintained (1929/1978a, p. 167). In his words:

The therapist should learn not definite rules and prescriptions, tricks and catches, general theories and typical interpretations, no definite theory and technique of psychoanalysis but to analyze, which means, in my opinion, the understanding and handling of the therapeutic situation. (p. 5)

Rank’s approach requires a centeredness in the here-and-now which also stems from his understanding that all affects have their roots in the present. Rank (1929/1978b) states that “The only ‘trueness’ in terms of actual psychic reality is found in emotion, not in thinking, which at best denies or rationalizes truth, and not necessarily in action unless it follows from feeling and is in harmony with it” (p. 40). “The therapeutic experience itself” (p. 5) is what counts the most and the experience entails “emotional surrender to the present” (p. 27) in the “here and now” (p. 39). This way, the therapeutic situation is never merely a repetition of the past but rather “the New” which the client and the therapist have not experienced (Rank, 1929/1978a, as cited in Kramer, 2019, p. 83).

The experience of and confrontation with the unknowns of the moment are twofold. The present has the potential to be regenerative, inspiring, and fulfilling, while also possibly scary, revealing, and disappointing. The therapeutic encounter exposes not only the client to uncertainties and unknowns but the therapist as well. As existential psychologists from James Bugental to Kirk Schneider have pointed out, the embrace of the terra incognita, the unknown territory, is a freefall of experience within which we are all suspended (Bloch et al., 2011).

Life is not something to merely describe or analyze; rather, it is an active choice for this reason. A person chooses to surrender to the present and encounter itself, another, nature, or art, in the same sense that it chooses to engage in free association and the birth of a new idea (May, 1963). On a more temporal level, I dedicate my body, time, energy, and resources to the pursuit of my goals (Bradford & Sterling, 2009). One of the greatest contributions of existential thought from theorists like Rank and those he influenced, such as Rollo May and James Bugental, is the recognition that because the present entails a choice, it also provokes an anxiety that risks blocking the manifestation of will.

The Need for Courage

In this sense, our freedom is paradoxical because we must make decisions without knowing the outcome with any degree of certainty. Every decision in life or in the therapeutic situation entails the new, the unpredictable, the marvelous, the unintended, and the undesirable. To be alive in the moment, we must leap into the unknown. And since every decision is made without assurance of the outcome, courage is required and is fundamental to self-actualization (May, 1975). Most pressingly so in the case of the creative type, who as noted, must be prepared to leave security and easy adjustment to go beyond the standard map and accepted ideology of their time (Rank, 1941/1958).

May (1963) concluded that “new places” give rise to anxiety (p. 238). Essentially, it is a choice to experience, and as Bugental puts it, “so long as we are denying our experience, happy or sad, the other part is being denied too” (Bloch et al., 2011, 12:48). Notwithstanding moments that fail to deliver the desired outcome, at times even confirming our worst fears, the literature holds many accounts of self-discovery taking place where the personal life is deeply lived. The American author Miller (1961) who was in therapy with Rank during his years in Paris, expressed one such event in The Tropic of Capricorn, where in a failed attempt at love he learned something about himself:

I reached out for something to attach myself to—and I found nothing. But in reaching out, in the effort to grasp, to attach myself, left high and dry as I was, I nevertheless found something I had not looked for—myself. (p. 14)

The existentialist Sartre (1943/1992) argued that human life begins at the far side of anxiety; we must go through the fear of the unknown to get to the creatively possible. An unsettling, transcendent reality unfolds in the unknown present and in the world of encounter. This reality peers beneath self-definition, social conditioning, and rational grasp. At times, instead of confronting this reality, a person resorts to self-deception. Instead of assuming a life-affirming approach, it may then reach for reductive theories, moral precepts, or technical procedures to cling to. This, as a way to protect itself and ease its anxiety about the fact of its own freedom and possibility of self-actualization (see also Schneider, 2023a).

The Self Needs an Other to Become

To existential thinkers like Otto Rank, Jean Paul Sartre, and Rollo May, we are, become, and create ourselves through the act of will. This confronts us with a choice and demands our commitment to that choice. This commitment, May (1975) maintains, must always be based at the center of our being, “or else no commitment will be ultimately authentic” (p. 13). This means that instead of proceeding from conceptualizations, abstract categories, and externally- or self-imposed ideals, we start with the phenomenological understanding that our own personal experience is the base upon which our knowledge of the world is built (Maslow, 1968/2011).

At the same time—and, as mentioned, contrary to some of the humanistic motivational theories that Rank inspired—personhood is in Rank’s view not a closed system, concerned with the actualization of the own, individual self (see Bühler, 1965). Rank (1929/1978a) considered the way in which we accept another person essential to their ability to extend their psychological flexibility, embrace the terra incognita of the therapeutic situation, and commit to personal development. In many instances, one may discern mutual underlying principles in Rank’s and Carl Rogers’ formulations regarding the therapeutic situation. May and Rogers both drew on Rank (Kramer, 2019, 2023). Rank (1929/1978a) contends, for example, that “the individual can accept [itself], [their] own will because the other does, an other does” (p. 64). Similarly, Rogers states in a dialogue with Paul Tillich in 1965, “I believe that the person can only accept the unacceptable in [itself] when [it] is in close relationship in which [it] experiences acceptance” (Rogers et al., 1989, p. 71).

Several philosophers have recognized aspects of intersubjective relatedness of the kind Rank propounded. Relation is not “that of a thinker to an object” as Maurice Merleau-Ponty showed (Cooper, 1990, p. 81). Nor does Martin Heidegger’s philosophical concept of dasein, imply a “being-present-at-hand-together of a subject and object” (p. 81). Rather, dasein (literally: being-there) indicates that human beings are not subjects separated from the world; they are inherently involved with and caught up in the world (Holzhey-Kunz, 2014). It is, as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel contended, by perceiving how others perceive us that we partly perceive ourselves (Evans, 2005). In psychodynamic theory, sides of this matter have been discussed in terms of true-self false-self theory (Winnicott, 1965), where ideas of fragmentation (false-self) were already present in Ferenczi’s work (Haynal, 2014), as well as in Rank’s persistent rejection of self-deception for self-affirmation. A more recent example is Fosha’s (2005) elaboration of Winnicott’s concept postulated in her true-self true-other construct. This refers to growth-enhancing dyadic relatedness, characterized by presence, openness, responsiveness, and willingness. In this case, a fragmented (false) self can be understood in terms of a protective response against its own unmet self, whereas an integrated (true) self is a mode of being, evoked by the presence of a self that accepts it (i.e., a true other).

Embracing Ambivalence

To recap, the perceived separation from the cosmos that is central to Rank’s theory begets a lifelong paradoxical quest: we fear both life (self-actualization) and death (self-dissolvement; a return to the Whole) in a sense. The conflict plays out in several compartments of our lives. I strive toward separation and individuation on the one hand, toward union and belongingness on the other. At the same time, I deeply desire both separation and unity because my will to separate correlates with my creative urge; my need to assert myself, and my will to unite aligns with my need to give love and receive love. Rank accepts this contradictoriness as a part of our existence as embodied beings. In our everyday lives, it may take various expressions of an ongoing conflict between “spontaneity and reflectivity, body and soul, nature and nurture, conscious and unconscious,” where Freud, as T. Fuchs (2019) writes, “tried to relieve [our] consciousness of this inherent conflict” by placing free will in the space belonging to the unconscious (p. 101). “[T]hus withdrawing this will from the subject’s responsibility” (p. 101).

As Maslow (1968/2011) recognized: “A person is both actuality and potentiality” (p. 20). So does Rank (1924/1929b) see—in the intrinsic self-cosmic connection—a preexisting potential, where the creative will forms a type of underlying ontological reality (see Costa, 2016; I. S. Ekenstierna, 2024). At the same time, one of Rank’s (1929/1978a) major contributions to therapeutic psychology is that he at-once emphasizes the individual’s will as autonomous; a person is accordingly (partly) self-determined. According to Rank (1929/1978a), therapy consists in understanding “how to recognize in the mixture of universal and individual, the essence of [an individual’s personality] and to use it constructively in a therapeutic experience” [emphasis added] (p. 4).

In therapy, and especially in the final phases, the inner self-cosmic conflict is evident. With the creative will at the center of Rank’s theory of personality, acting as an organizing whole in the lifelong process of integration of opposites, the counter-will is of additional importance. Based on a will to both independence and self-sufficiency, and a desire for relation and healing through meeting, the client, as Rank (1929/1978a) puts it, “wants two different things at the same time, both the end and the continuation of the analysis” (p. 15). “Incidentally this throws a light on the nature of . . . ambivalence, as a conflict of will, or better said, as the human capacity for mobilizing will and counter-will at one time” (p. 15).

As Kramer (in press) notes, Rank’s concept of counter-will ¹⁸ resembles the daimonic in so far as the counter-will reflects, as May (1969/2001) phrased it, “the urge in every being to affirm itself, assert itself, perpetuate and increase itself” (p. 123). To Rank this inevitably entails confrontation, in life and in therapy, with self-assertion and negative emotions such as aggression—at times at the expense of the relation. It is important that the therapist recognizes the therapeutic value in the expressions of will, including counter-will, which may present itself as negative reactions, revolts, and resistance or self-protection. It is of equal importance to understand that the therapist’s task is not to act as will for the client (which would take the responsibility away from the client) and “only to function as counter-will in such a way that the will of the patient shall not be broken, but strengthened” (p. 16). Empathy and confrontation must thus in all regards be viewed and handled as complementary, in that they complete and enhance one another. Such a notion is a cornerstone also of many contemporary short-term dynamic psychotherapies, some of which were inspired by Ferenczi and Rank (Malan & Coughlin Della Selva, 2006).

Kramer (in press) notes regarding Rogers—who drew on Rank when developing his person-centered therapy—that despite the similarities between them, they differed on the therapeutic value of the equivalent to the daimonic, which Rogers struggled to incorporate. As evident from correspondence between May (1982) and Rogers, the latter mixed up the demonic and the daimonic. May stated to Rogers, “I find it important that the patient [is] able to take a stand against me” (as cited in Rogers et al., 1989, p. 246). This indicates that it is necessary to explore negative expressions in therapy, such as anger, hostility toward the therapist, and destructiveness. Rogers was aware of people’s harmful, immature, regressive, anti-social, and hurtful ways, provoked by fear and self-protection, but as Kramer puts it, he was not able or willing to intentionally invite the daimonic out in his clients. But that the human being’s psychological health partly depends upon its ability to recognize, integrate, and express the gamut of emotions as opposed to just the positive, is per our current dominant scientific paradigm considered evidence based by now (e.g., Johansson et al., 2014).

As noted, the term daimonic, in existential psychology, often concerns paradoxical aspects such as the intimate relation between creativity and destruction (May, 1969/2001). Schneider’s (2023a) concept of life-enhancing anxiety is a concrete example. It entails that even a certain portion of anxiety functions as a motivation for a person’s creative, ethical, and passionate engagement with their own self-development. To Rollo May as to Rank, the daimonic needs to be integrated into the personality for constructive, positive will, and creativity to arise. This integration includes transcending pain, hardships, and stagnation into growth and mastery, and is the very purpose of psychotherapy (Kramer, 2019; May, 1969/2001; Rank, 1929/1978a). While the daimonic aspect of psychological health and wellbeing often is assigned to insignificance (in mainstream therapeutic psychology and wellbeing science), Rank and May with different terminology contended that it is one of the most determining factors of human existence (Kramer, 2019; May, 1969/2001; Rank, 1996).

According to Rank, successful therapy resembles a psychological rebirth. “One gives birth to a new self, with the analyst as midwife” (Lieberman, 1985, p. 232). His early formulations anticipate more broadly Bion’s (1978) emphasis on the intersubjective nature of personal development and in another way Rogers’ (1961). As the latter put it:

I rejoice at the privilege of being a midwife to a new personality . . . It is about both the client and me as we regard with wonder the potent and orderly forces which are evident in this whole experience, forces which seem deeply rooted in the universe as a whole . . . life vividly reveals itself in the therapeutic process—with its blind power and its tremendous capacity for destruction, but with its overbalancing thrust toward growth, if the opportunity for growth is provided. (1961, p. 5)

For such rebirth to become possible we want to think of therapy as an embracement of the ambivalence. By way of illustration, May quotes poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Upon withdrawing from psychotherapy after understanding the purpose to which it aspired, Rilke said: “If my devils are to leave me, I am afraid my angels will take flight as well” (Rilke, 1939, as cited in May, 1969/2001, p. 126). Rank (1929/1978a) clarifies that it concerns not a passive or fatalistic acceptance, but rather “an active constructive utilization” of the inevitable conflict inherent in life and importantly in the person itself (p. 206). As Rank (1941/1958) also concludes in his very last book: “We are born in pain . . . and we should accept life pain as unavoidable—indeed it is a necessary part of Earthly existence” (p. 16). This is an important message in relation to today’s partial quick-fix culture and strives toward symptom reduction.

For Rank, as to Rollo May, for the human personality, a final unity is neither attainable nor desirable. Such an ideal state entails the death of personality, as May (1939) put it, explaining:

For personality is dynamic, not static; creative, not vegetative. What we desire is a new constructive adjustment of tensions rather than any final unity. We do not wish to swipe away conflict altogether—that would be stagnation—but rather to transform destructive conflicts into constructive ones. (p. 69)

Living well, maintaining psychological health, and nourishing personal growth, requires according to Rank (1932/1968) a lifetime of “seeking at once isolation and union” (p. 86). This process is worked through in a continuum throughout the entirety of a person’s life, which is a “never completed birth of individuality” (1929/1978b, p. 11). Without resorting to reductionism, Rank’s is an optimistic message of limitless potential, continuous evolution, and becoming. But it comes with responsibility and urges courage to create.

Concluding Note

In this article, I first pointed to some indications derived from recent psychotherapy research. The therapeutic relationship accounts for about one-third of treatment outcomes. Psychodynamic, humanistic-existential, and cognitive-behavioral therapies all demonstrate efficacy if they center on the therapeutic relationship. A research gap exists concerning how therapeutic relationships form and are impacted during a therapy session.

I then suggested that by tracing the roots of relational therapy in its forerunner, Otto Rank, the relational construct may be further elaborated. Rank’s approach is relevant to relational psychodynamic practice, existential-humanistic and transpersonal psychology, as well as some behavioral treatment models with appreciation for the experiential. His work further elucidates the compatibility of philosophy and modern science.

Next, I offered an analysis of some of Rank’s key tenets. Rank’s strong relationality is pertinent to phenomenology and quantum-relativistic physics, where rather than mind-matter, object-subject, person-World, being separate, a person co-creates with the world at large. The bridging of mind-body-matter in Rank’s theory explains why embodied (or experiential) qualities of therapy are integral to his approach.

Spontaneity, mutuality, and a realm between client and therapist are central to Rank’s notion of the therapeutic process. I elaborated on this, by noting that a central aspect of the therapeutic relationship transcends the goal-directed conversation between the individuals and proceeds instead on attunement of a meta-narrative of meaning or an intermediate dimension, namely the therapeutic third. This also means that each session and each client have a unique potential for different developments and possible progress.

Lastly, I offered some guiding principles of practice, based on Rank’s and related theorists’ work. It is essential that the therapist assumes a life-affirming approach by being optimistic about the client’s ability to change and the many opportunities for growth that potentially exist. The experiential dimension of the encounter has precedence and entails emotional surrender to the present. The therapist is involved in the process and open to the possibility of being moved by the present. Various realizations that the therapist encounters can neither be seen nor touched and must instead be “intuited.” A person can accept the unacceptable in itself via experiences of acceptance from another.

To experience the here and now in therapy as in life, is a choice, which demands courage.

Therapists and clients may cling to reductive theories, moral precepts, and technical procedures as ways to protect ourselves from the unsettling unknown reality of the present moment. But only in the present lies our possibility for self-actualization and self-transcendence to work in tandem.

Surrendering to the present and being open to explore and experience the area between client and therapist is crucial. Therapist and client are encouraged to embrace the ambivalence in the here and now. This includes allowing negative emotions, uncertainty, and counter-will, and to explore these with the same sincerity and genuine interest as other expressions. In this process, the therapist does not assume the responsibility on behalf of the client for their development by acting as their will. And it only assumes a function of counter-will, in other words, invites self- assertion and daimonic aspects out in the client, in such a way that the will of the client is strengthened and their faith in themselves enhanced.

While the article introduces some theoretical foundations of Rank’s approach and applies the discussion to daily life and the therapeutic situation, these sentiments can also be applied on a wider societal level, as ques to ways in which we can approach polarization.