[1] Benjamin B. Rubinstein was born in the Jewish community of Helsinki, Finland, and he attended school both in his home town and in Copenhagen.

In Helsinki University, he studied first history and philosophy, but after having read Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud, he changed to the Faculty of Medicine in order to become a psychoanalyst.

[2] When the Winter War broke out in 1939, Rubinstein returned to Finland and served as a medic and a psychiatrist in the army.

[2] In 1947, Rubinstein and his wife moved to the United States[3] to be educated at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, until 1953.

[2] Benjamin B. Rubinstein wrote extensively on the philosophy of psychoanalysis,[3] including articles on the mind–body dichotomy, motivation, metaphor, the logic of psychoanalytic explanations, and metapsychology.