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There is a small group of significant contributors to psychoanalysis whose works remain scattered in the periodical literature or as uncatalogued chapters in multiauthor books, so that with the passage of time they tend to be forgotten. Arguably, Benjamin Rubinstein was the most important among these neglected authors; the analytic community owes a debt of gratitude to the editors of the Psychological Issues monographs for now making Rubinstein's contributions available in a volume edited and meticulously annotated by Robert Holt. These works deserve more extensive discussion than one can provide within the limits of a book review. Such an article was published by Morris Eagle in 1985 and is reprinted as part of the introductory material in the present volume. Holt's editorial comments also serve as a superb introduction to Rubinstein's difficult work.
Rubinstein tackled the most challenging problems of psychoanalysis, those involved with the very conception of “mind.” To prepare for this formidable task, he trained himself in epistemology in a manner unparalleled in our discipline and approached only by Rubinstein's mentor, David Rapaport. It is a measure of Rubinstein's thoroughness and modesty that he did not begin to publish until the age of 60. Between 1965 and 1980, he wrote about a dozen articles of fundamental importance to the field. Although Rubinstein always wrote in a lucid manner, his works are so closely argued that they often defeat efforts to summarize them, and even a momentary failure of concentration on the part of the reader will produce confusion. This is no bed-time reading!
As the title of the collection implies, Rubinstein took for granted that psychoanalysis aspires to scientific status; it is this commitment that necessitates that we take some position on the mind/body problem—the “hard question,” as the enigma of consciousness is now referred to. Theoreticians who evade this difficulty would place psychoanalysis on a mentalist foundation; Ru