Discussion of “The Transitional Personality: Dislocation as a Major Character Dynamic” By Theodore Isaac Rubin

In his introductory paragraph to an article on the eighteenth-century Spanish painter, Luis Meléndez, John Russell, art critic of the New York Times, observes (Russell, 1989):

No two human beings read the same book, watch the same play, sit through the same movie, hear the same music or look at the same paintings and sculptures. Different eyes and ears are at work, and different expectations. Our eyes, ears and expectations change from year to year, moreover. Flux is the law of life, in such matters, and there is no way we can avoid it. The smart thing is to watch out for it, embrace it and risk drowning within it.

Yet there are people who don't get the idea at all.

It is precisely to these individuals that Theodore Isaac Rubin, M.D., directs his attention in “The Transitional Personality.” Dr. Rubin believes that dislocation is what life is all about.

Russell expresses the traditional view. Difficulties are due to a reluctance or a refusal to change. He addresses people who value personal and cultural history, as well as human relatedness. They experience time as a continuum. The dangers are stasis and conformity.

Rubin provides a revolutionary perspective. The process of change itself has been modified. It has become compulsive and invested with pride. The need to change has pervaded the character structure of the affected individuals. Their perception of themselves and the world has been so radically altered that an entirely new personality has resulted—the transitional personality.

The transitional personality concept is broad in scope and far-reaching in its implications. It is a new personality that is the result of new cultural developments and pressures. It is in the process of producing its own culture.

The cultural events and changes that promoted the advent of the transitional personality were in many ways foreseen by Hermann Hesse in the introduction