Otto Rank and Hermann Bahr Amidst Theater and Psychoanalysis in Freud's Vienna

Abstract

In 1906 the young Otto Rank, having just come into contact with the circle of Sigmund Freud, whose student he would become, wrote to the Austrian critic and scholar Hermann Bahr, a man in the forefront of the Viennese cultural and artistic scene, whose conception of art and culture revolved around theater and the problems inherent in the creative process of acting. Rank sent Bahr the manuscript of his first work, Art and Artist. Creative Urge and Personality Development, calling him the only man of letters in the entire German Reich who had striven – and was still striving – to solve problems similar to those he treated in his work.