Feelings

Abstract Rank used his feelings as an instrument to register—and empathize with—the feelings of his patients. With Ferenczi, Rank criticized Freud for never developing a theory of feelings or emotions. As an outcome, in none of his writings was Freud able to visualize sexuality or feelings from a woman’s point of view, just as he never saw any sign of their powerful will or moral development. But feelings, said Rank, express the will. Up to the present, psychoanalysis has developed no theory of feelings. Attracted to Rank’s attention to feelings, social workers also appreciated that Rank was the first psychoanalyst to focus on pregnancy and childbirth. The pregnant body had received no attention by analysts before Rank. Practicing will therapy, Bill Menaker treated Betty Friedan in the 1950s for inhibitions in her capacity for self-leadership; thus Rank played an indirect role in the introduction of second-wave feminism.