Yacov Rofé
Bar-Ilan University, Israel
Biography
Yacov Rofé is a professor of psychology at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel. He completed his first and second degrees in psychology at Bar-Ilan University and received his Ph.D. from Hull University, England, in 1973. He held the position of chair of the interdisciplinary department of social sciences at Bar-Ilan University for fifteen years. Rofé was a visiting professor at both Rutgers Medical School in New Jersey and Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
He has published many articles in leading academic journals of psychology, including a theory entitled “Stress and Affiliation: a Utility Theory”, published by Psychological Review in 1984. An additional influential article, published in Review of General Psychology, 2008, is a review that refutes the existence of repression and the Freudian Unconscious.
In recent years, Rofé’s scientific work has focused on the development of a new theory of psychopathology, which challenges the validity of traditional theories of psychological disorders. Rofé published a book entitled The Rationality of Psychological Disorders, by Kluwer, in 2000. He has since published four subsequent articles supporting his Rational-Choice Theory of Neurosis (RCTN). These include articles which : (1) demonstrates the ability of RCTN to integrate all therapeutic methods pertaining to neurosis in one theoretical framework (Rofé, 2010), (2) integrates all data relevant to the development and treatment of conversion disorder (Rofé & Rofé, 2013), (3) resolves the theoretical confusion regarding the explanation of panic disorder, agoraphobia and other forms of bizarre phobia (e.g., chocolate phobia) (Rofé, 2015), and (4) that suggests a new diagnostic criteria based on RCTN that challenges the validity of the DSM (Rofé, 2016).
Rofé completed a new book, entitled The Intuitive Rational-Choice Theory of Madness: Schizophrenia, Criminal Insanity and Neurosis: The Fallen Empires of Psychoanalysis, Medical Models and Drug Companies. Distinguished researchers, including Professor Robert Aumann, Nobel Prize Winner in economics, acknowledged the merits of this book. In his letter to the editors, Aumann noted, "Rofé's theory, revolutionary as it is, fits well into the framework of economics, game theory and evaluation."
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