Two Fear Possibilities--- that control most all of human motivation, says Rank.
Addendum: (added here Jan. 19/23)... I have just been reading finally Rank's (1941) last work "Beyond Psychology"-- and it is blowing my mind as an inherently critical thesis that completely undresses modern psychology (and its therapies)--showing that they are based on a "deep-seated fear" (p. 40) that it itself will not admit. I so agree, and have long worked out my own philosophical critique of "Psychology" as we know it--especially in the Western modern era. Anyways, yes, Rank is a fear-analyst (proto-fearist theorist/philosopher) as I labeled him some 7 months ago but now I would say so even more strongly. I see so much of my views on all kinds of things, very much rooted in a Rankian fear-analysis. More to come on all that in 2023.
For e.g., the existential theorist-psychotherapist Schneider (2023) wrote, "The psychoanalyst and existential philosopher Otto Rank (1924) has come closer to apprehending the root of anxiety [existential fear] than any other theorist of which I'm aware....To probe anxiety we must begin at the beginning--and Rank means the primal beginning--birth. This is the point at which, again, each of us encounters 'difference,' the unfamiliar, and radical otherness for the first time (separation anxiety and stranger anxiety seem related to this primal moment of severance). It is the point at which we confront mortal danger from these differences....We start from the relative state of nonexistence and unity to sudden explosive existence and disunity, from a state of quiescence and containment to mayhem and the uncontained....what a shock this was for us, what jarring and drama" (p. 11).
Schneider, K. J. (2023). Life-enhancing anxiety: Key to a sane world. University Professors Press.
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