The Good Life: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Love, Ethics, Creativity, and Spirituality

142 Pages·2004·1.37 MB·English

by  Jeffrey B. Rubin

psychoanalytic
reflections
on love,
ethics,
creativity,
and spirituality
Jeffrey B. Rubin
THE GOOD LIFE

Jeffrey B. Rubin
THE GOOD LIFE
psychoanalytic reflections on
love, ethics, creativity, and spirituality
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS
Published by
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS
ALBANY
© 2004 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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For information,address State University of New York Press,
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Rubin,Jeffrey B.
The good life :psychoanalytic reflections on love,ethics,
creativity,and spirituality / Jeffrey B.Rubin.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-6215-3 (alk.paper) — ISBN 0-7914-6216-1 (pbk.:alk.paper)
1. Psychoanalysis.2. Conduct of life. I.Title.
BF175.R82 2004
150.19'5—dc22
2004008927
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to four teachers,whose wisdom,
guidance,and support have immeasurably aided my efforts
to understand myself and live a good life.
George Atwood
David Kastan
Joel Kramer
Monte Ullman
And to John Moody,best friend every step of the way.

C o n t e n t s
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1. Psychoanalysis and Creative Living 9
2. Values and Ethics in Psychoanalysis 25
3. Psychoanalysis at Play in the Garden of Love 45
4. There’s More Than Meets the I:
Psychoanalytic Reflections on Spirituality 61
5. Psychoanalysis and the Good Life 87
Notes 99
Bibliography 111
Index 123
vii

P r e f a c e
Since psychoanalysis is my home, I feel free not to treat it
politely.It needs constant upkeep and can always use renewal.
—Robert Stoller
PSYCHOANALYSIS HAS BEEN an endless source of enlightenment and inspi-
ration to me for the past twenty-four years.Encountering it in my twenties was
undoubtedly one of the most auspicious and formative experiences of my life.
Psychoanalysis has transformed my life by opening up vast and subtle vistas on
human motivation and relationships that I doubt I would ever have discovered
in any other way.
Psychoanalysis is increasingly marginalized in our postmodern world,
where everything is deconstructed and debunked from reason to revelation,and
standards of ethics are leveled and homogenized.Egocentricity,hedonism,pop-
ular psychospiritual quick fixes, and self-anesthetizing and addictive behavior
serve for too many people in Western culture as misguided substitutes for the
good life.These bleached-out versions of a life well-lived leave us spiritually
hungry and cast adrift without any guiding direction for action,and desperate
for solutions to address the malaise and alienation that plague us.
I find it ironic that psychoanalysis is increasingly attacked,if not dismissed,
at the very moment when it has a seminal and profound contribution to make
to contemporary reflections on what afflicts us,and what might heal and sus-
tain us.Articulating these contributions is crucial to the renewal of psycho-
analysis in the twenty-first century.
A central theme of one of my earlier books,A Psychoanalysis for Our Time:
Exploring the Blindness of the Seeing I,was that for psychoanalysis to actualize its
emancipatory potential and illuminate how we could live with greater depth
and intimacy,joy and meaning,it must draw on its hidden resources as well as
confront its blind spots and omissions.To do this,I recommended that psycho-
analysts examine topics that had been sorely neglected in the field,such as the
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