Additional theorists included in this chapter provide a basis for understanding creativity and motivation. Topics include Piaget and Carl Rogers compared with Maslow, Skinner’s reinforcement theory, Bandura’s self-efficacy concept, Festinger’s focus on cognitive dissonance, Flavell’s concept of metacognition, Adams’s equity theory, and the Rosenthal and Jacobson pygmalion effect.

The experience of uncertainty is outlined at two levels: individual and societal. On the individual level, uncertainty has both positive, constructive implications and negative, maladaptive ones. As a main response on the individual level, the function of promoter positions is delineated, with the Rogerian concept of “organismic valuing” as a prototypical example of an “inner compass.” Organismic valuing as a bottom-up approach is critically discussed, and the dialogical self is proposed as an interchange of bottom-up and top-down processes. On the societal level, the experience of uncertainty is addressed with reference to Zygmunt Bauman’s liquid society and Ulrich Beck’s risk society. Some adaptive and some less adaptive responses to several of the main challenges of our time are sketched: climate change and the corona pandemic. An identity model is presented that consists of identity positions at four levels of inclusiveness: individual, social (group), collective, and ecological, each with their specific types of responsibility.

Known for the concept of the “trauma of birth,” Otto Rank’s contributions to the fields of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy have largely been obscured. Rank came from an impoverished family with an alcoholic father, and was sent to a trade school to become a locksmith. However, his unique insight into applying psychoanalytic concepts in understanding philosophy and art caught the attention of Freud, who supported him in his college education and graduate studies. Freud hired him to be the secretary of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, where he functioned as Freud’s “right hand man” for close to twenty years. Intriguingly, his “breaking away” from Freud’s circle coincided with Freud’s diagnosis of oral cancer and near-death from surgical complications. Ostracized by orthodox Freudians, he nevertheless was able to further explore pre-Oedipal issues and the significance of separation anxiety. He developed his patient-centered, brief psychotherapeutic approach, with particular focus on the “here and now” and on patients’ autonomy and self-healing potential. His ideas heralded the later developments of client-centered therapy, existential-humanistic therapy, and Gestalt therapy.