Eric Rhode (born 10 May 1934) is a British writer on traditional cosmology, psychoanalysis and the history of the cinema.

After Rhode had worked as a critic, author and broadcaster on film and the arts, he undertook a personal psychoanalysis with Donald Meltzer and trained as a child psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic under Martha Harris.

His later work addresses the interface between the structures discernible in dreams, children's play, aesthetics, ethnographic ritual, and philosophy.

After qualifying as a child psychotherapist, Rhode worked in the National Health Service at Paddington Green Child Guidance Clinic and in private practice, and studied with Kleinian psychoanalysts including Wilfred Bion.

It arose out of interviews he conducted in an inpatient unit for mothers with post-partum psychosis and their babies, but also addressed the historical and cultural evolution of attitudes towards pregnancy and childbirth and the psychiatric theories they inspired.