This is a book about choices—the choices we make that shape our Experience, Expression, and Intimacy. These choices determine the nature of what our life is and what it will be. Based on decades of clinical practice, teaching, and writing, The Polarities of Experience is a series of deeply personal philosophical reflections by psychoanalyst Richard Rubens on dealing with the realities of our world and the people in it.
Aimed at any intelligent, thoughtful reader, The Polarities of Experience is an exploration of how the ability to remain close to the immediacy of experience determines the direction our life moves. The closer to reality the direction of our choices, the more positive and meaningful our life becomes; the further we retreat from reality into the direction of depression, aggression, inequality, or authoritarianism, the more diminished life becomes. This book explores ten Polarities—spectrums along which our choices position us. Once we understand them, these Polarities enable us to improve our choices and generate positive change in the life we create.
Can we accept the loss that comes with growth and change, or do we retreat into depression? Do we positively express our selfhood, or do we become aggressive? Can we be intimate, or must we avoid it by substituting power, abuse, dependence, or deceit? Do we accept our freedom and the responsibility that goes with it, or do we run to authoritarianism? Can we accept the novelty and mixed nature of the world and the separateness of people in it, or must we distort in ways that prevent us from growing and becoming healthy and mature?
The Polarities of Experience provides numerous personal examples which bring life and clarity to the book’s philosophical ideas. Seasoned psychoanalysts will find useful and novel approaches to familiar concepts; those with no background in psychology will find a fascinating introduction to sophisticated ways of thinking about relationships and the meaning of being an individual in the world. The Polarities of Experience will lead you to a more positive and creative understanding of self-assertion in the world, intimacy in relationships, and healthy personal functioning.
Table of Content
Contents
Introduction 1
PART ONE: Experience
1 ‘The Terrible Ambiguity of Immediate Experience’ 13
2 Reality v. Idealization and Denigration
THE PRIMARY POLARITY 18
3 The Reality of Loss v. Depression
THE SECOND POLARITY 27
PART TWO: Expression
4 Self-Expression 47
5 Assertion v. Aggression
THE THIRD POLARITY 66
PART THREE: Intimacy
6 Love and Intimacy 87
7 The Polarities of Intimacy 105
8 Intimacy v. Power: Power v. Power Over
THE FOURTH POLARITY 118
9 Intimacy v. Abuse: Power v. Abuse
THE FIFTH POLARITY 143
10 Intimacy v. Dependence: Mature Dependence v. Infantile Dependence
THE SIXTH POLARITY 170
11 Intimacy v. Deception: Truth v. Deception
THE SEVENTH POLARITY 207
PART FOUR: Socio-Political Considerations
12 Freedom v. Authoritarianism
THE EIGHTH POLARITY 255
PART FIVE: The Psychoanalytic Polarities
13 Open-Systems v. Closed-Systems
THE NINTH POLARITY 279
14 Separation v. Lack of Differentiation: Health v. Narcissism . . . and Worse
THE TENTH POLARITY 306
15 Obsessive v. Hysterical: The Bifurcation of the Tenth Polarity 330
Epilogue ‘what’s with you and all these ‘polarities’?’ 359
References 365
About the author
Richard L. Rubens is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. He is a supervising analyst and on the teaching faculty of the William Alanson White Institute, and for decades had been on the faculty of Columbia University as an Adjunct Professor in the Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program at Teachers College. For the past 12 years he has also been working with major cities around the world as part of the Urban Age program at the London School of Economics.
Education: Dr. Rubens has a BA from Yale University in History of Art, a BHL from Hebrew Union College in Rabbinic Studies, a Ph D from Columbia in Clinical Psychology, an internship at Harvard Medical School, and a certificate in Psychoanalysis from the William Alanson White Institute.
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