Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Table of Contents:
Psychology
Dare to Be Creative
I’m wondering what I might yet do, what others are too busy to do. First, I’m not the only one, but perhaps your question will generate good things: I need help in my goals to integrate the best creative developments of the creative arts therapies. One thing I think you’ve noticed is that normal people […]
Density of Eventfulness
The angels have been conspiring to remind lil’ ol’ me that life is shorter than I thought, and I realized that others also are prioritizing—or needing to. There’s a density of eventfulness. There have been changes in how much I feel this way or that, so that such and such seems important! I’ve noticed that […]
Depth Psychology Education
Psychology has been around for over a century, and it’s time we spread the word. Much of it has been mystified, but it shouldn’t be. A moment’s reflection—well, more than a moment for many of us–will reveal that we in our know-how-ing selves don’t even know what we do when we pee! I mean, there […]
Diddely-Squat Chicken-Shit
What I don’t know! Boy, do I need to surrender. There’s a real type of effort in psychically “letting go,” though. It’s only vaguely an act of will, or maybe non-will. But it’s not the same as “trying,” much less “trying harder.” It’s 99% beyond me, that I realize, the 1% being that I know […]
Dimensional Thinking
There is a hidden assumption that everything can be presented in terms known to all. This is as fallacious as saying that all higher mathematics can be symbolized by simple arithmetic and no other symbols are needed. It’s a matter of trying not to be all “stuck up”—we learned to try to not be this […]
Dimensionality as New Perception
It has occured to me that “Dimensionality,” might be thought of as a new angle on metaphysics, or what people used to call “religion,” though of course I seek no converts. It notes that just as the third dimension adds dimensionality to the second dimension, and the fourth—time— adds dimensions of duration to space, so […]
Divesting
What a word: I need to begin to divest myself of too much stuff. (My book collections are strong examples of too much stuff.) George Carlin, the late comedian, has a wonderful bit he does about “stuff.” I’m beginning to look at all my books that way—not much, but it’s a beginning. So did I […]
Drawing the Best Forward
I want to help in integrating the best creative developments of the creative arts therapies. Indeed, it’s not just for therapy. Normal people need encouragement to use the creative arts, to improvise. The conventional school system says in effect, "I don’t care about your creativity. Learn what we know. That ought to be sufficient." But […]
Dream Realities
I had a vivid dream a week or so ago: It was an early morning dream; those seem to be more vivid. I thought about it, dreams in general, memory, the way things can seem real enough to catch you up in dealing with them, and, in short, the deeper nature of reality. Dreams do […]
Explaining “Dimensionality”
I call my theory of reality, my metaphysics, “dimensionality.” The word suggests that some things are better understood as operating at different dimensions. Thus, some truths are best understood as applying to certain dimensions, and there is “more-yet” that is so at a higher dimension. For example, consider solid geometry. In dealing with a sphere, […]
Exploratory Drama for Life
It may be time to confirm some rapprochement among drama therapy (all varieties, and there are several!), psychodrama (several varieties), and other arts “therapies”—and more that their being considered together, and consider now how they do not have to be therapeutic. In the mid-1950s some people partook of psychoanalysis because it was fashion-able, not because […]
Feeling That I’ve Really Lived
If I think about it, I have indeed really lived. Curiously, I don’t often feel this way. Indeed, I have a mild neurotic complex that suggests gently in feeling tones that I haven’t. Thank goodness, it’s very mild: I’m pretty well balanced; but I’m cleaning up mild complexes. It never ends, you know. At times […]
FOMO Comments
This came across my “desk” in the mail, and I mostly agree: Have you heard the acronym FOMO? It stands for “Fear of Missing Out,” and a popular hashtag. Personally, I’m not sure I ever experienced FOMO, even in my younger years, but I know now, with age, I feel entirely justified in my lack […]
Halloween Contemplation 2013
Fear is an amazingly primal instinct, and you can see it in birds and deer and squirrels—they look around, their ears (if you can see them) prick up: What’s that strange sound? Babies get waves of strangeness and they startle and cry. Or for other reasons they become uncomfortable. At some point they enjoy quieting […]
High Dimensionality
I’ve been coming to the thought that mind itself is the primary reality, not matter, the 3rd dimension—which is what most people take to be hard reality. Most recognize that the 2nd dimension—what they can see in pictures, read in papers, is not altogether reality. Alfred North Whitehead went up one notch and noted that […]
How My Mind Works
I got into a mental eddy: I took off on the word, “akimbo,” and my wife looked it up on Wikipedia. The etymology of the word was expounded and I found myself fascinated with how uninterested I was in this information. Apparently there are many people, however small the percentage, who care about etymology. And […]
I Can “Fabulate”
There’s a word, “confabulation,” that refers to the way some people’s minds rather obviously make up a reality, memories, consistent thinking, that jibes with a slight suggestion. It’s more obvious in some patients than others. I daresay that in subtle ways it’s ubiquitous! We do this far more naturally in dreams. Then when we wake […]
Identity
An old fried, a Lutheran, addressed me assuming I’m Jewish—which I am, a little. But I’m affiliated now with the Unitarian Church nearby—inter-denominational sermons about being thoughtful and good. His good wishes for me reflects the perception that because I was born Jewish I still identify, but I don’t, well, not that much. Identity is […]
If Not Psychodrama, What?
A student of psychodrama in Europe asked me about international qualitative and quantitative standards in psychodrama psychotherapy as he is writing a thesis about training between different training organizations and the prospects of some unification of minimal standards. I appreciate his offering me an opportunity to comment as a private citizen, by no means a […]
Improvisation
Paul Jackson in the UK writes: Leaders know that an improvisational mindset helps fuel the practices of many of the most successful companies, especially in Silicon Valley. Leaders frequently reference their impro training, and they bring improviser in to help with management development, team-work and strategy. I’ve been hired by Google, for example, to set […]
Individuality
A recent correspondence: My friend Ed wrote about seeing the video of my son David’s presentation in Seattle about “Spectrums”—a book he had just published. He wrote, “You son David has inherited your exuberance and capacity for projection. I learned something .. of the existence of "tetrachromats": Amazing idea, that some people have sensory capacities […]
Jung & Dimensionality
I like the work of Carl G. Jung, and want to note that his "thing" wasn’t really therapy so much as self-discovery. That this would help people was a side-benefit. The human mind is capable of mysticism, and maybe more. The mind taps into the 8th dimension, which is to the human mind as the […]
Jung and Moreno
I’ve recently encountered a paper about Jung and Moreno, which reminded me of some books, and it got me thinking, as I am wont to do. Jung, whom Freud dis-missed as messing in the dark mud of occult-ism, plumbs the non-rational that suffuses the realm of the unconscious. (Dreams, for example!) Jung opens some doors, […]
Laziness versus Death Wish
Freud posited a death wish, Thanatos (in Latin)—what word did he use? These other instincts beyond sexuality were needed as the theory grew: It wasn’t possible to explain everything in terms of the sex drive. But I think these terms are misleading, even were we to accept that there’s more than a germ of truth […]
Levels of Mind
I don’t know how to prove this, but mind that thinks about awareness represents a dimension of mind as different from bare awareness as is the third dimension different from the second dimension. Yet there’s a further step in dimensionality: If mind—awareness—is another dimension, then thinking about thinking is what humans do. So if space […]