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Rubinstein combined an unusual sophistication in philosophy of science with a broad grounding in clinical practice. Unfortunately, his theoretical ideas have failed to receive the attention they deserve from mainstream psychoanalysis. His close friend and collaborator, Robert Holt, makes a significant contribution through editorial comments, and Morris Eagle provides a comprehensive introduction. Rather than attempting to summarize these papers, I will focus on a few central themes.
Rubinstein drew a distinction between personal and organismic levels of explanation. The former is grasped through immediate experience, whereas the latter is a construction of natural science. This dichotomy is illustrated by the difference between a chair viewed as a chair versus as a particular organization of molecules of a certain type. Both are real, and neither can be reduced to the other. Different ways of seeing the same thing establish two worlds, the everyday human world as contrasted with the world of natural science. Human beings are persons as well as organisms.
Although the everyday human world must not be confused with the world of natural science, there are important correspondences between the two. Rubinstein speaks of activities with regard to persons and processes in reference to organisms. He says, “A person obviously can be aware only of his activities, not of the processes in the world of natural science corresponding to these activities” (p. 420), thereby calling attention to a concept of the unconscious related to the distinction between the “experiential” versus the “nonexperiential” drawn by Sandler and Joffe (1969). Freud's preconscious and dynamic unconscious belong to the experiential