Creating modern psychotherapy

Abstract By most accounts, Carl Rogers is credited with creating modern psychotherapy, but Rogers always pointed to Rank as his inspiration for developing client-centered therapy, a synonym for relationship therapy. Empathically listening to feelings—the music underneath a client’s words—in order to release the creative will was the main theme of Rank’s lectures on relationship therapy at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work. Over the last three decades, psychotherapy outcome research has shown conclusively that the quality of the therapist–client relationship is the crucial factor in healing. In addition to transforming how Rogers practiced therapy, Rank, with his focus on love and will, and “life fear” and “death fear,” strongly influenced Rollo May’s thinking on existential therapy. Far ahead of his time, Rank was the first psychoanalyst to infuse existential-humanistic themes into therapy, opening up new horizons for social work, counseling, and psychotherapy.