Throughout his career, Neal Rubin, Ph.D., ABBP, has focused on psychologists’ moral and ethical responsibilities, as well as psychology’s potential to address challenges faced by some of the world’s more vulnerable populations. This thinking has bridged psychology and human rights communities.

For his work, Dr. Rubin will be receiving the Award for International Academic Excellence in Psychoanalytic Psychology at the 42nd Annual Spring Meeting of the American Psychological Association’s Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology (SPPP). He was selected by the SPPP’s International Relations Committee.

Dr. Rubin will accept the award during the event, to be held April 26-29 in New York City.

“In my view, psychoanalysis has always been about engendering human freedom by providing an avenue to release ourselves from the ways we as individuals and the structures of our societies inhibit flourishing,” Dr. Rubin said. “I am deeply honored to receive this recognition and in turn hope to do justice to this award by continuing to advocate for human rights and dignity in our field and in our global society.”

With the theme of “Our Beautiful Struggle,” the conference is presenting ideas on how the psychology community might reckon with the legacy and ongoing presence of colonization and violence that is reproduced within the field; make a psychological case for reparations to heal from the moral injury of chattel slavery; reconsider the role of the psychoanalytic journal in the current social political context; and reimagine its training institutions so that it finally reflect its pluralistic society.

The award is the latest in a string of recognition for the Adler Chicago clinical psychology faculty member. In 2021, Dr. Rubin and Roseanne L. Flores, Ph.D., won the Ursula Gielen Global Psychology Award for their book, “The Cambridge Handbook of Psychology and Human Rights.” In August 2022, Dr. Rubin gave the annual Lynn Stuart Weiss Memorial Lecture at the APA Convention. Most recently, in October 2022, he moderated a keynote program that explored the need to promote human rights education during the 2022 Science, Technology and Human Rights Conference in Washington, D.C.