Originally published in 1924, this study of the Don Juan legend is a powerful interpretation of one of the most popular themes in Western culture. Also valuable for the insights it offers into Rank's thought immediately before his break with Freud, the book has not been available in English until now. Rank's study draws on psychoanalysis, literature, history, and anthropology to suggest some psychological mechanisms that operate both within the principal characters of the legend and within the audience or reader.

Originally published in 1975.

The Princeton Legacy Library...

Originally published in 1924, this study of the Don Juan legend is a powerful interpretation of one of the most popular themes in Western culture. Also valuable for the insights it offers into Rank's thought immediately before his break with Freud, the book has not been available in English until now. Rank's study draws on psychoanalysis, literature, history, and anthropology to suggest some psychological mechanisms that operate both within the principal characters of the legend and within the audience or reader.

Originally published in 1975.

The Princeton Legacy Library...

First published in German in 1909, Otto Rank's original The Myth of the Birth of the Hero offered psychoanalytical interpretations of mythological stories as a means of understanding the human psyche. Like his mentor Sigmund Freud, Rank compared the myths of such figures as Oedipus, Moses, and Sargon with common dreams, seeing in both a symbolic fulfillment of repressed desire. In a new edition published thirteen years after the original, Rank doubled the size of his seminal work, incorporating new discoveries in psychoanalysis, mythology, and ethnology.

This expanded and...