About me
Sanford L. Drob, Ph.D.
Sanford L. Drob is a philosopher and forensic psychologist who is Professor Emeritus in the Clinical Psychology doctorate program of Fielding Graduate University. He holds doctorate degrees in Philosophy from Boston University and in Clinical Psychology from Long Island University. His books, including Symbols of the Kabbalah, Kabbalistic Metaphors, Kabbalah and Postmodernism, Kabbalistic Visions: C. G. Jung and Jewish Mysticism, examine Jewish mystical symbols through the lens of contemporary philosophy and psychology and develop a comprehensive philosophy/theology that he terms “The New Kabbalah.” His Archetype of the Absolute: the Union of Opposites in Mysticism, Philosophy and Psychology, explores the notion of coincidentia oppositorum as it appears in the kabbalah and other disciplines with the goal of resolving a range of traditional philosophical, theological and meta-psychological problems.
Dr. Drob’s most recent work explores the the psychological significance of the “Eden complex”, C. G. Jung’s views on the meaning of life, the threat of artificial intelligence, and the value of an interrogative approach to the ultimate question of why the world exists. The last of these, Why Existence: The Question is the Answer, explores the significance of the kabbalistic dictum: “Concerning everything that cannot be grasped its question is its answer.”
In addition to his work on the New Kabbalah, Dr. Drob has numerous publications in clinical and forensic psychology. A substantially revised edition of his book, Reading The Red Book: A Guide to C. G. Jung’s Liber Novus was published by Routledge in 2022.
Sanford Drob’s articles on Jewish philosophy have appeared in such journals as Tradition, The Reconstructionist and Cross Currents. Dr. Drob is the grandson of Rabbi Max Drob, an important disciple of Solomon Schechter. In 1987 Dr. Drob published a brief biography of his grandfather based upon archival materials at the Jewish Theological Seminary and interviews with his grandfather’s contemporaries, including Rabbis Louis Finklestein, Simon Greenberg and Mordecai Kaplan.
Sanford Drob has a long-standing interest in the psychological, social and spiritual roots of criminality, and is known for his work with violent offenders on Bellevue’s Psychiatric Prison Ward (where he was Senior Psychologist from1984-2003) and throughout the criminal justice system. He specializes in assessing the state of mind of offenders at the time of their criminal acts, and has testified in numerous homicide and other criminal trials.
Dr. Drob’s philosophical and psychological interests originally led him to the study of contemporary theology with Thomas J.J. Altizer at Stony Brook and analytic philosophy, existentialism and phenomenology at Cornell and Boston University. His philosophy dissertation, which was written under the guidance of the Neo-Platonic philosopher J.N. Findlay, was a study and critique of the philosophical psychology of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Dr. Drob later went on to analyze the spirituality of halakhic Judaism in Wittgensteinian terms. As a doctoral student in clinical psychology he developed interests in the philosophical foundations of the various psychotherapeutic schools, and took a special interest in psychoanalytic and Jungian thought.
In the 1980s Dr. Drob became attracted to the study of Hasidism. He studied Tanya with Rabbi Shimon Hecht in Brooklyn and developed an interest in the living spirit of Jewish mysticism as it is expressed in the Chabad (Lubavitch) movement. Since that time he has engaged in study of the Kabbalah, the problems of God, Mind and Evil, and the relationship between Jewish Mysticism and other traditions in the history of Western and Eastern thought.
Dr Drob is currently working on a Kabbalah inspired study of the ontological status of values and their priority in philosophy, psychology and mysticism, and completing a novel about the insanity defense, Jewish identity, and mystical theology.
Sanford Drob is also a narrative painter who has endeavored to re-signify Jewish, mystical, and archetypal themes in contemporary terms. His paintings can be seen at https://www.sanforddrobart.com
Dr. Drob is a licensed psychologist, who maintains an active practice in criminal psychology in New York City (Sanford L. Drob, Ph.D. – Clinical and Forensic Psychology.
In 1987 Sanford Drob co-founded, and for several years served as editor-in-chief of the New York Jewish Review, a publication addressing the interface between traditional Judaism and contemporary thought, and which featured interviews and debates amongst leading rabbis, including Adin Steinsaltz, Moshe Tendler, David Bleich, and Norman Lamm, articles on Jewish art, culture and cinema, guidelines for respectful dialog between the various movements in American Jewry, and Dr. Drob’s early essays on Kabbalah and Hasidism.
Sanford Drob, editor, and Harris Tilevitz, publisher of the Jewish Review, with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, 1989.