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DR. JEROME RABOW
Like
you,
I have been around the block a few times.
Like
you,
I was afraid to question the direction my life has taken over the
years.
Like
you,
I did not know what it takes to make changes in the very things that
have defined us.
 And
now perhaps,
like you I am no
longer
afraid
to ask
those questions and make those changes.
The
kind of questions so many people entertain
are questions like, do I fit? Am I happy where I find myself right now?
Am I satisfied with my life? Having
the best education does not necessarily lead us to knowing the answers to
these, and many other, questions. Like
yourself, I have always been willing to question the direction of my life,
not just accepting the
direction my life seemed to be going.
When
I look back at growing up in Brooklyn, New York, I can now see that
"growing up" was not an accurate way to describe what I had
accomplished with my life. I
had earned an undergraduate degree in sociology and psychology at Brooklyn
College, and received my master's degree in sociology at Columbia by the
time I was 24 years old. However,
I later realized that I had done all this without a clear vision of the
direction I wanted to go with my life.
Many
of us search for this definition of ourselves through our work, looking to
find something that brings us fulfillment or a sense of purpose.
Others look to the relationships in their lives for the same
purpose. In my own search, I
worked with delinquent youth in residential treatment centers in Hopewell,
New Jersey and Provo, Utah and worked for the army doing morale surveys of
soldiers stressed by basic training.
These experiences provided me with a clearer picture of the kind of
work that would be rewarding to me, and also demonstrated how much more I
needed to learn myself. Therefore,
I went back to the academic world where I completed a Ph.D in social
psychology at the University of Michigan, and accepted a position as an
Assistant Professor at UCLA in the Sociology department.
Today I hold the position of Professor Emeritus, as I continue to
enjoy my role as educator, and continue to learn from my teaching, my
students, my patients and the research I am involved in.
However,
when you do something for a long time, you can sometimes find yourself
asking the question - is this what I do or is this who I am?
Teaching has the proved itself
to be an answer to both of these questions for me, where
interacting with people in this way adds to the value I receive and can
give to my life and the life of the students I work with.
However, I, like so many others, can begin to feel as though there
is something lacking, even though we enjoy what we have and what we do.
For me it began to feel as though there was a growing need for
greater interpersonal depth than was available in the teaching forum.
After many years in academia, I saw that I could be better prepared
to work with the lives of real people, dealing with real issues.
To accomplish this goal, I became a licensed Marriage and Family
Therapist, further enhanced with my skills by undertaking psychoanalytic
training.
My
multifaceted career as a scholar, educator and therapist is a very rich
one where doing research helps my clinical work and my therapeutic
understanding supplements my teaching.
As a trained psychotherapist I study and understand how societal
assumptions, stereotypes, prejudices and norms about sex, race and
societal status impact our lives and make it difficult to discover our
true worth, and further prevent us from realizing our untapped potential
for making our lives richer, deeper, and more meaningful.
At
The Center for the Promotion of Intimacy we have made a place where
individuals and couples can uncover the destructive and neurotic patterns
that keep them from realizing a true self.
I look forward to helping you do exactly that.
Call us.
We can help.
310-712-7039
Jerome Rabow, PhD
http://www.camft.org/Therapists/JeromeRabow
Member:
American Sociological Association
M.F.C.C., Ph.D.,
Psychotherapist, Author,
UCLA Professor Emeritus,
UCLA Luckman
Distinguished Teaching Award (1995),
Marriage, Family and Child Counselor,
CA Lic. No. MH002636
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