Adam Blatner

The word “confabulation” refers to an unconscious process that seems real, and makes whatever seem plausible. It partakes of what we do in our dreams: It all can seem so real. (The word for seeming real is  “verisimilitude.”) I’m not saying that  people  consciously make up stuff. The unconscious does this effortlessly, and more thoroughly, […]

Simple Heart-Songs Singing simple song, brief, with words, can be another type of spiritual practice. The ones below I picked up from the late David Zeller and, in the early 1980s, from Elizabeth Crisler. Many of these are also included in a book titled Circle of Song: Songs, chants and dances for ritual and celebration, […]

I like to promote song fests, opportunities for all those who would like to enjoy singing together to do so. There’s singing well enough to be applauded as a performer; maybe well enough to even be paid for it—but that’s only for the top 2-8% of people! Most of us who like to sing and […]

Sing! Sing a song. Make it simple, to last your whole life long. Don’t matter if it’s not good enough for anyone else to hear! Just sing!  Sing a song! This song, by Joe Raposo, from the Sesame Street children’s television program in the late 1960s, has a powerful message!  Sing out! Singing can be so […]

I myself am a little bit socially dense—what was given the name “Asperger’s Disorder.”  Characters on television such as Dr. Sheldon Cooper illustrates this condition. I prefer the designation, "social learning disability." Social learning is more closely related to a talent that is innate, similar to sports, music or math abilities. A certain amount can […]

(This is the beginning of a new era for me. I have become accustomed to publishing in various recognized professional journals, but now I just want to get the word out, and there are other reasons I will write about shortly.) Although the empty chair technique arose from psychodrama psychotherapy, like many “therapeutic” techniques, this […]

I ended the previous essay (Part 2) about the amplifying unconscious by noting the basic thesis: one of the functions of this type of psychic dynamic is that it amplifies the intensity and speed of the experiences associated with perception, meaning, importance, and the sense of will. However, just because it’s powerful that doesn’t mean […]

However plausible this idea may be in beginning to explain a number of mysteries in psychology and philosophy, it does face a significant obstacle: It doesn’t jibe with the “scientific” world-view of the mid-20th century. I put “scientific” in quotes because really the true spirit of science is not hampered by looking at things it […]

This article is a complement to and/or extension of  another paper on this website: The Art of Case Presentation. Other relevant articles include: The Real Diagnostic Categories, Diagnosis in Psychiatry, Factors in Human Development , and others. What’s wrong with the patient? What really is the problem? A term like “depression” rarely explains much. Offering a diagnostic label is […]

One of the most difficult-to-treat conditions is the personality disorder called “sociopathy” or “psychopathy”—the kind of “con man” who rips people off, and often the confirmed criminal. I was corresponding with a colleague in England who works with such problems and shared with her some ideas about some of the dynamics I think go on […]

Responding to a NY Times article  about science and discovery in December, 2009, the article speaks about how our consciousness continues to grow as we discover new horizons in astronomy, sub-atomic physics, and so forth. This brings up an interesting epistemological issue! (Epistemology is that branch of philosophy that asks, “How do we know what […]

My wife and I just gave a workshop on “The Shadow,” for students in the Drama Therapy Program at the California Institute for Integral Studies (CIIS), in San Francisco. (It was a fitting presentation for Halloween). The Shadow is (among other meanings) Jung’s term, translated into English. He means by it all the elements that […]

My friends the Zibble-Zorks have told me that there are indeed human beings who not only do not believe in the sprite-ual realm, but—stay cool, friends—there are many who do not even know of their existence. So they asked me to post a picture of them and asked you or or your kids or grandkids […]

Can something be true but not the whole truth? Forgive my fooling with what seems to be cut and dried, but by no means am I alone in this question. First, some history: Propaganda I became intrigued with propaganda in my early teens, in the early 1950s. Propaganda was a bad word, I knew that. […]

There’s a song with that title. I realized that I’ve grown not older, but old! I was talking to a mature woman of 60 who hadn’t heard of the phrase “Dig it!”! What?!? But this had several impacts on me! 1. I’ve already forgotten temporarily what that phrase was, and that in some ways, I’m […]

Why or how does the innate tendency towards complexity emerge in the cosmos? Teilhard de Chardin has hypothesized this tendency but it doesn’t coordinate with any present principles in physics. Still, I am not satisfied by most purely materialist theories. So I just had this idea, a wild speculation: What’s with Dark Energy, anyway? In […]