Rites Of Passage Expert Dr Arne Rubinstein on Transformational Growth

Dr Arne Rubinstein: doctor, counsellor, mentor, speaker & workshop facilitator

In this week’s episode of "Real STUFF” our host Hunter Johnson sits down with Founder of the Rites of Passage Institute, Dr Arne Rubinstein, an internationally recognised expert on rites of passage and adolescent development. A GP, author, social commentator - and a longtime mentor to Hunter.

Arne has worked with teenagers since graduating from the International Institute for Youth Leaders in 1982. He worked as a GP for 12 years specialising in Adolescent Health, Preventative Medicine and Emergency Medicine. During Arne’s time in emergency medicine he noticed a lot of young men being admitted to hospital due to taking risks and living on the edge without anyone to facilitate them through those experiences. 

“They were doing it (searching for an edge) in their cars, doing it getting into street fights, or jumping from cliffs into water, and unfortunately as an emergency doctor I also saw that way too often it would impact the rest of their lives, if not kill them.”

He realised they were caught in a world between child and adult and their actions often had disastrous lifelong consequences. Through his research he discovered that for thousands of years indigenous communities around the world had recognised the importance of creating a process to support the coming of age of boys and girls. This prompted Arne to leave his medical career to work full-time creating Rites of Passage programs.

Hunter and Arne’s conversation spans the historical link of rites of passage to First Nations cultures, how Arne developed his Rites of Passage program to help support tens of thousands of boys to begin the transition into becoming a man, to the role of elders in facilitating a rite of passage and the concept of “the edge” - the space between comfort and appropriate discomfort - “a concept that can be both physical and emotional that has a direct link to personal growth.”

Discover more about Arne and the Rites of Passage Institute at https://ritesofpassageinstitute.org/