Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy
Dr. Rubin is strongly grounded in both traditional psychotherapy and more contemporary modalities. He has worked in non-traditional ways with troubled families, meeting for several hours at a time or extended periods over a weekend, in order to break through difficult and long-standing family dynamics that are causing severe dysfunction and heartbreak.
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Dr. Rubin believes that each person is unique. Therefore any one-size-fits-all approach to therapy will be a disservice to the client and will ultimately fail. Dr. Rubin knows good therapy must be individualized. It is like jazz. It requires a sound basis in the fundamentals of human development and motivation and awareness of the self-protective strategies we use to keep ourselves safe, and years of experience — at which point the therapist has the freedom and flexibility to improvise and use a variety of approaches and tools, geared to what the patient needs, rather than what the therapist believes. This increases the chances that deep healing will occur, which supports the person taking their rightful place in the world.
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Contact Dr. Rubin for more information or to schedule an appointment.
Living With Authenticity and Passion
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It's fashionable in our time to dismiss psychoanalysis. As increased attention is given to alternative therapeutic modalities, the brain, and somatic approaches to trauma, it's tempting to conclude that psychoanalysis is a relic of a bygone age.
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And yet, despite these challenges—and a world that seems increasingly focused on quick fixes and has an aversion to self-introspection—psychoanalysis has a profound relevance for our troubled time. It can be an emotional sanctuary from our culture of immediacy and bombardment and an arena in which we can discover the best within ourselves and access untapped resources for addressing a world that is increasingly spinning out of control.
Psychoanalysis can not only illuminate cultural madness that increasingly impinges on our lives and our sessions, it can aid us in living with greater authenticity and passion, meaning and intimacy in challenging times.
Integrating Eastern and Western Traditions
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A leading integrator of the Western psychotherapeutic and Eastern meditative traditions, Dr. Rubin created Meditative Psychotherapy based on 40 years of study, teaching and helping people to flourish.
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Meditative Psychotherapy is Dr. Rubin's unique integration of the best elements of the Eastern meditative and Western psychotherapeutic traditions. The insights of each compensate for and complement the blindspots of the other.
Meditative Psychotherapy consists of three elements:
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Using meditation and yogic breathing to quiet and focus the mind.
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Drawing on psychoanalytic understandings of symbolic and unconscious communication to discover the meaning and emotional significance of what arises when the mind gets quiet and focused
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Real-life examples of how, in tandem with meditation, the therapeutic relationship can become a crucible in which recurrent patterns of restrictively seeing and organizing one’s life are transformed so that new and liberating kinds of human connections can occur.
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Combining the three elements offers an accessible and grounded pathway for transformation: Applying the principles of meditation into the psychotherapeutic process and synthesizing the wisdom of both traditions will avoid typical therapeutic and spiritual stalemates, widen the kinds of anguish therapists can address, and open up unsuspected pathways to healing.
See Dr. Rubin's books Meditative Psychotherapy and Practicing Meditative Psychotherapy to learn more.
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