SOURCE: An introduction to The Don Juan Legend by Otto Rank, edited and translated by David G. Winter, Princeton University Press, 1975, pp. 3-34.

In the following essay, Winter providess background information on the Don Jaun Legend.

Otto Rank was one of the most brilliant and imaginative, yet surely one of the most perplexing members of the group who were drawn to Freud and who participated in the early development of psychoanalysis. Rank analyzed myth and legend with an insight and a facility that approached that of the master; his energy and resourcefulness were essential to the survival of the early psychoanalytic publishing ventures; his wide reading and knowledge of literature were more than once of assistance to Freud's own work; and he was perhaps Freud's closest continuing associate for fifteen years. Yet in the midst of his brilliant career he left the psychoanalytic movement, physically removed himself from...