The Good Life
Psychotherapy and Buddhism:Toward an Integration
A Psychoanalysis for Our Time:Exploring the Blindness of the Seeing I
Recent Articles
"There are two things I wanted to do: I wanted to show the things that had to be corrected; I wanted to show the things that had to be appreciated" (Lewis W. Hine)
Books
Psychoanalytic Reflections on love, ethics, creativity and spirituality.
The quest to live a good life -- with awareness and creativity, passion and wisdom -- has been a central concern of the world’s great philosophers, psychologists and spiritual teachers.
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Toward an Integration
Psychotherapy and Buddhism is a controversial and ground-breaking examination of two of the most powerful methods of achieving self - understanding and inner peace
Unique aspects of the book include:
- Why psychotherapy and Buddhism by themselves are insufficient to address the malaise that haunts us ?
- The historical and sociological background and world views of each discipline and their relevance in our age.
- How the self that psychoanalysis strengthens is an egocentric mode of being contributing to the emptiness and alienation that therapy purports to address
- How Buddhism's view of human life fosters an evasion of subjectivity that generates the very self-blindness and narcissism that its practices supposedly diminish.
- How the psychoanalytic model of health can be seen as an arrested state of development that limits the multidimensional nature of human experience; and why the Buddhist model of wellness-enlightenment is an unreachable ideal that promotes self alienation and corruption.
- How psychoanalysis and Buddhism can be integrated so that their unique strengths and emancipatory potential will be realized.
Psychotherapy
and Buddhism not only offers a novel critique of psychoanalysis
and Buddhism, it also presents a new way of integrating these
two traditions so that their profound insights about the art
of living emerge. This provocative and accessible work is
an exceptional resource for anyone involved in self-inquiry
and personal understanding, including mental health professionals
and clients, spiritual seekers, scholars and students of psychology,
religion, anthropology and cross-cultural studies, and the
general reader.
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page.
A Psychoanalysis for Our Time:
Exploring the Blindness of the Seeing I
Psychoanalysis is not a relic of a bygone age, rather it has a profound relevance for our troubled time. Deftly steering a balanced course between Freud's virulent attackers and his loyalist defenders, Rubin discerns both blind spots and hidden strengths in psychoanalysis.
Along the way, he reveals its covert authoritarianism, Byzantine politics, censorship of of dissident thinkers, residual sexism, and overly simplistic accounts of self.
Not only does Rubin cogently critique the flaws of psychoanalysis, he offers a visionary approach for its renewal, based on cultivating a greater historical, theoretical, and methodological self-awareness within psychoanalysis. Drawing on a vast array of intellectual tools and disciplines, including history, deconstuctionism, feminism, anthropology, Eastern meditative disciplines, and psychoanalysis itself, he portrays a psychoanalysis that is self-reflective and nonauthoritarian, pluralistic and emancipatory.
Encyclopedic in scope, integrative in spirit, A Psychoanalysis for Our Time is a brilliant and landmark work, whose accessibility makes it an exceptional resource for psychoanalysts and other mental health professionals, scholars and students in the humanities and social sciences, and the general reader.
Advance Praise for the Book
"This
beautifully written and visionary book points the way toward
a posthumanistic psychoanalysis characterized by self-reflectiveness,
diversity, and an enormous emancipatory potential. A Psychoanalysis
for Our Time is a breath of fresh air for all who are
interested in the revitalization of contemporary psychoanalysis.
"
Robert
D. Stolorow, coauthor of Working Intersubjectively
"
An insightful, provocative and accessible book that will be
of interest to a very wide audience. Rubin has a keen appreciation
of both the insights and contributions of psychoanalysis,
along with its many limitations and failures. Both trends
are traced to the split in Freud: what he could see and not
see in himself, particularly his intensely ambivalent relationship
with his mother. Rubin follows these trends through psychoanalysis,
with illuminating discussions of Sandor Ferenczi, D.W. Winnicott,
Heinz Kohut, and the issues of creativity versus institutionalized
rigidity- and freedom versus authority- as these have played
themselves out in the history of psychoanalysis. The reader
comes away with a deeply enriched appreciation of both the
field and a number of its key contributors."
Louis Breger, Founding President, Institute of Contemporary
Psychoanalysis
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page.
"Deepening Psychoanalytic Listening: The Marriage of East and West." In: Principles of
Multicultural Counseling and Therapy, Eds. Uwe Gielen & Jefferson Fish. NY:
Routledge, 2008, pp. 373-389.
"Psychoanalysis and Spirituality". In: Psychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century,
Ed. David M. Black. London & NY: Routledge, 2006, pp. 132-149.
"Stand
Back from the Rope,"
O, Oprah Magazine, March 2005
"Hang
Up the Gloves,"
O, Oprah Magazine, August 2004
"Stand Back from the Rope." In:
Live Your Best Life: A Treasury of Wit, Wisdom, Advice,
Interviews, and Inspiration from O, The Oprah Magazine.
Oxmoor House, pp. 191-193.
"Spirituality
and the Self" J. Religion and Health,
43:3: 217-220, 2004.
"Psychoanalysis and Buddhism." In: U.Gielen,
J. Fish and J. Draguns (Eds.), Handbook of
Culture, Therapy, and Healing. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, pp.
253-276, 2004.
"Psychoanalysis after Postmodernism": Review
of Jung and the Postmodern: The Interpretation
of Realities. Quadrant: Journal of the C. G. Jung Foundation
for Analytical Psychology,
33: 1: 88-95, 2004.
"The Well-Lived Life: Psychoanalytic and Buddhist
Contributions." In: Psychoanalysis and Buddhism:
An Unfolding Dialogue, ed. Jeremy Safran. Boston: Wisdom
Publications, 2003.
"Close Encounters of a New Kind: Reflections on
Psychoanalysis and Buddhism." In: Encountering Buddhism:
Western Psychology and Buddhist Teachings, ed. Seth Segal.
NY: SUNY Press, 2003.
"Social and Psychological Uses of the Internet."
In: Deciphering Cyberspace, L. Shyles (Ed.),
Thousand Oaks: CA, 2003, pp. 201-219.
"Psychoanalysis and Creative Living." J. of
the American Academy of Psychoanalysis. 31: 2:
361-380, 2003.
Review of Michael Eigen's Ecstasy. Psychoanalytic Review.
90: 2: 261-265, 2003.
Review of Harold Coward's Yoga and Psychology: Language,
Memory, and Mysticism. J. Religion and Health. Forthcoming.
"Reflections on Values in Psychoanalysis."
In: A. Molino & C. Ware, (eds), Where Id Was:
Challenging Normalization in Psychoanalysis. London:
Continuum Press, 2001.
"Religion, Freud, and Women." In: Gender and
Psychoanalysis. 4: 4: 333-365, 1999.
"Close Encounters of a New Kind: Toward an Integration
of Psychoanalysis and Buddhism."
The American Journal of Psychoanalysis. 59: 1: 5-24,1999.
"The Illusion of a Non-Future: Reflections on Psychoanalysis
and Its Critics." In: R. Prince
(ed), The Death of Psychoanalysis: Murder? Suicide? Or
Rumor Greatly Exaggerated?
Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, pp. 335-351.
"Freud's Legacies: Towards a Posthumanist Subjectivity
and Practice." The European Legacy:
Toward New Paradigms. Forthcoming.
"Fostering Tolerance and Creativity in the Culture
of Psychoanalysis." J. of the American
Academy of Psychoanalysis. 24:3: 457-483.
"Reflections on Values and Ethics in Psychoanalysis,"
Division 39 Newsletter, Spring 1997.
"The Analyst's Authority" J. of the American
Academy of Psychoanalysis. 25:1: 15-35.
"Psychoanalysis is Self-Centered." In: C. Spezzano
and G. Gargiulo (Eds.), Soul on the Couch.
Hillsdale, New Jersey: Analytic Press, 1997.
Review of Peter Loewenberg's Fantasy and Reality in History,
Psychoanalytic Books, 7:4: 560-
566.
Review of Adam Phillips' Terrors and Experts, Psychoanalytic
Books, 8:3: 284-290.
Review of Adams & Szaluta's Psychoanalysis and the
Humanities, Psychoanalytic Books, 8:3:
360-365.
Review of Adam Phillips' On Kissing, Tickling, and Being
Bored, Psychoanalytic Books 8:1:
128-132.
Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: Toward an Integration."
In G. Stricker & J. Gold (Eds.).
Comprehensive Textbook of Psychotherapy Integration.
New York: Plenum Press,
1993.
"Psychoanalytic Treatment with a Buddhist Meditator."
In M. Finn and J. Gartner (Eds.)
Object Relations Theory and Religion: Clinical Applications.
Westport, CT: Praeger
Press, 1992.
"Clinical Integration of Buddhist Meditation in
Psychoanalysis." J. of Integrative and Eclectic
Psychotherapy, 10 (2):173-181, 1991.
"Object Relations Theory and Religious Experience."
The American Psychological Association
Division 36 Newsletter. 8/89.
"Meditation and Psychoanalytic Listening."
Psychoanalytic Review, 72:4: 599-612. 1985
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