About the Author: Otto Gross (1877-1920) was an Austrian philosopher and psychotherapist whose work, in contrast to mainstream philosophy, sought not to discard but to reconstruct the philosophy of conscious and, moreover, to integrate it with biological and historical approaches. The son of the internationally famous criminologist, Hans Gross, he began a career as a psychiatrist in 1901 in Graz, working as an assistant under Gabriel Anton. In 1902 he introduced (in contrast to Bergson's idea of duration) a concept of temporal lengthening and/or shortening of the processing of stimuli, which, when habituated, creates two contrasting types of mind use. He also began to weave Anton's concept of compensation together with his own concept of self-preservation as a harmonious antagonism of differentiation and containment. In 1907, he combined these ideas with a conceptualization of how an adaptive reaction takes place, thus creating the basis for an explanation of degeneration in Nietzschean terms as well as - going beyond Kant - for a naturally purposive adaptation. From 1907 on, Gross' life was increasingly marred by drug addiction, by estrangement from his father and by restlessness and a general ineptitude for daily living - not able to plow a row to the end, as C. G. Jung once figuratively said of him. In place of Nietzsche's nihilism and Kant's teleological concept of human unity, he had, however, a reverse teleology to offer: his understanding of original drive brought with it a belief in an inherent principle which, regardless how layered over, still functions as an inner norm and continues to offer the possibility by which individuals and society may live on 'matriarchal' terms, that is, in freely creative relationships. And this understanding of 'becoming' by being truly 'self' brought him - despite the inevitable final waste of his talent through drugs - the attention of numerous critics, as well as an endless stream of followers. On the one hand, he could count as adversaries people who were far apart ideologically, such as the economist, Max Weber, and the anarchist, Gustav Landauer. As a practitioner of psychoanalysis and, early on, a student of Freud, he was perhaps Freud's best - though now forgotten - critic. And in return, as Ernest Jones acknowledged, Freud discouraged attention to Gross' ideas. On the other hand, through influence on writers, artists, and philosophers such as Kafka, Hausmann, and Marcuse, his ideas have outlived his generation.