Using an idea from Schopenhauer, Rank develops a metaphor: Life is
a loan, death the repayment. The artist type takes the loan and spends or invests
it—willingly. Such a person accepts the finite term of the loan, and makes choices in accordance with that reality. The neurotic,
in contrast, cannot willingly accept the loan with its limit. He or she
vacillates, paralyzed by anxiety and doubt, refusing to commit the
life-loan. At repayment time, the neurotic hopes—pathetically—to flout the
limit. “I haven’t begun yet. I should not have to die—I have not
really lived!”
