Good Life, The

Explores how psychoanalysis can nurture and vitalize, rather than only focusing on affliction and neuroses.Psychoanalysts have traditionally been expert at uncovering what afflicts and damages people, argues Jeffrey B. Rubin, but by focusing on narcissism and perversions, depression and sadism, psychoanalysis has all too often disregarded what nourishes and sustains us. In The Good Life, he demonstrates how psychoanalysis can make a profound contribution to the well-lived life by drawing on a neglected but potent aspect of psychoanalysis-its capacity to illuminate a psychology of health as well as illness. Rubin shows that, at its best, psychoanalysis can highlight both the ingredients of love, ethics, creativity, and spirituality, as well as the obstacles to experiencing them. Exploring the good life from this dual perspective provides an indispensable resource for helping us live with greater meaning and vitality.Jeffrey B. Rubin is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City and Bedford Hills and is also Faculty and Training Supervisor at Harlem Family Institute. He is the author of the groundbreaking and critically acclaimed Psychotherapy and Buddhism: Toward an Integration and A Psychoanalysis for Our Time: Exploring the Blindness of the Seeing I.