Sanford L. Drob (b. 1952) is a philosopher, forensic psychologist, and painter, best known for his efforts to forge a rapprochement between Jewish mysticism and modern and postmodern thought. In a series of books (Symbols of the Kabbalah, 2000, Kabbalistic Metaphors, 2000, Kabbalah and Postmodernism, 2009, and Kabbalistic Visions, 2010), as well as on his website (www.newkabbalah.com), Drob seeks to demonstrate that the symbols of the Lurianic Kabbalah articulate a “basic metaphor” that is reprised in a philosophical idiom in the writings of such later thinkers as Hegel, Freud, Jung and Derrida. Drob also holds that the Lurianic Kabbalah reflects ideas, such as the “coincidence of opposites” that have been present in various eastern and western mystical traditions and philosophical systems, including Vedanta, Gnosticism, and Neo-Platonism. According to Drob, implicit within the Lurianic Kabbalah is a systematic philosophy and theology that provides a foundation for understanding the cosmos and humanity’s place within it, but which is by its very nature subject to radical critique and revision; it is a “system that is not a system” and thus provides an opening for continuing positive theology and metaphysics in a postmodern world.
Drob explains that the Kabbalists’ absolute, “Ein-sof,” literally “without end,” enters into a series of dialectical transitions, in which it is contracted and concealed (Tzimtzum), emanates archetypal values (Sefirot), is embodied in a Primordial Human (Adam Kadmon), is shattered and dispersed (Shevirat ha-Kelim), and, finally, must be restored and reconfigured through the efforts of humankind (Tikkun Ha-Olam). Because all things, including the absolute itself, embody each of the phases (e.g. values, deconstruction, reconstitution), Drob understands the divine as an ever-evolving open economy of thought, value, feeling and experience, one that embodies a unity of opposites and which is never subject to closure. In several of his writings and interviews Drob draws out the implications of the Lurianic theosophy for the discipline of psychology and the practice of psychotherapy.
Drob is also known for his interpretation of the writings of C. G. Jung. In a series of articles and books Drob articulates the impact of Jewish mystical ideas on Jung’s psychology, explores the question of Jung’s purported Anti-Semitism, and makes use of Jungian ideas to provide a psychological interpretation of the Lurianic theosophy. Drob argues that because the alchemists were heavily influenced by the Kabbalah, Jung, in “extracting the psychological gold” embedded in alchemical texts, was actually reconstituting the Kabbalah in psychological terms. Support for this thesis is found in the fact that Jung himself declared that a Jewish mystic, the Maggid of Mezirich, had anticipated his entire psychology in the 18th century. Drob further explores Jung’s “Kabbalistic Visions,” which Jung experienced when he was close to death after a heart attack in 1944, and which he later described as “the most tremendous things he had ever experienced.”
Drob’s book, Reading the Red Book: An Interpretive Guide to C.G. Jung’s Liber Novus, was published in 2012, and was described by leading Jung scholar Paul Bishop, as a “commentary [that] will surely establish itself as the inevitable starting-point of Red Book interpretation for many years to come."
As a psychologist, Drob has made contributions in the areas of clinical and forensic psychology. He has addressed the fragmentation within the field of psychology and has proposed a dialectical resolution of its divergent paradigms.
As an artist, Drob works to update and resignify Jewish and other archetypal themes. His (In)humanity Triptych (2013) (cite) reinterprets three biblical narratives, the Expulsion from Eden, the Sacrifice of Noah, and Esther’s Accusation of Haman, through the lens of the Holocaust, and as reflecting the Kabbalistic themes of exile, rupture and repair. Drob, who was born in and resides in New York City, is descended from a long line of Eastern European rabbis; his great grandfather, Rabbi Judah Idel Drob, emigrated from Mlawa, Poland to New York in the 1890s; Rabbi Max Drob (1887-1959) was a student of Solomon Schechter, and was elected President of the Rabbinical Assembly of America in 1927.
Drob holds doctorates in philosophy (Boston University, 1981) and Clinical Psychology (Long Island University, 1987). He studied with the Neo-Platonic philosopher, J.N. Findlay (1903-1986), under whom he wrote a philosophy dissertation on Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mind in 1981. Drob maintains a website dedicated to Findlay’s philosophy.
As a psychologist, Drob served as the Senior Forensic Psychologist on the NYU-Bellevue Forensic Psychiatry Service (Bellevue Prison Ward) in New York City from 1984-2003, where he was also the Director of Psychological Assessment. Drob continues to practice forensic psychology in New York City, where he specializes in the assessment of criminal defendants and individuals who have been released from prison after wrongful incarceration. Since 2005 he has been a Core Faculty in the Clinical Psychology doctoral program at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, Ca.