Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Table of Contents:
Psychological Literacy
Economic Sociology: A Fresh View
I’ve been thinking about what helps people find and sustain an optimal level of a sense of social connectedness. It occurred to me that part of the problem is that it seems mundane, almost a matter of economics—not of money, but of an exchange of talent and interest. Sure, there are some elements of non-neurotic […]
Education of the Heart
I like this phrase. It’s a chapter heading if not a book title I’ll use. The Dalai Lama used it in a recent book, just noted on another blog post today. But his book—really, quite good—reminds me that there is a pedagogy, an art of education, a way to bring minds forward towards the achievement […]
Effective Love Requires More Consciousness
I recently read an email advocating the virtues of love of humanity and a quote from Albert Einstein about the ultimate unity of life. I agree, being a person of my time, subject to the idealistic paradigms of what civilization seemed to be reaching for. Yet it also stimulated in me a contemplation of why […]
Ego, Memory, and Forgetfulness
I have been contemplating the sheer vulnerability of my memories, and the innate elusiveness of so many of the experiences that part of me wants to cling to. I want to have these experiences whenever I want to access them, as if they were kept possessions, treasures. Well, that’s one of the things ego does. […]
Ego—a Term with Many Meanings
In a number of contexts—“new age,” psychology, consciousness studies, spirituality—the term “ego” has been used as if it’s a problem. There are several meanings of “ego” and it may be worthwhile considering these. First, the word is Latin for “I” and is attributed by the English translators of Freud’s writings to that part of the […]
Envisioning Our Children’s Needs in the 21st Century
Parents tend to rear their children with the mental and cultural tools they know about. For my parents’ generation, the goal was to get the kid raised in one piece, ideally resilient enough to go to college and get a good job. One category they didn’t know about was “validating the child’s individuality.” Sure, if […]
Epistemology and Depth Psychology
Epistemology is that branch of philosophy that inquires into the problem of how we know what we know. Can some of what we think we know be illusions or errors? How could that be? Can Truth be known? Reality? The first point here is that most people seem to buy into the idea that truth […]
Feminism & Masculinism
Talking with a friend about sex roles in contemporary culture, what occurs to me is that at least in part what is at issue is the way big business in collaboration with the fashionistas in advertising continue to promote certain ideals about what is sexually desirable, in body form, cosmetics, hairdo, fashions, and so forth. […]
Forms of Foolishness and How to Resist Them
The point of this series is that knowing about the various types snares and traps that lure us into foolishness may help us to resist or minimize their impact. What I mean by “foolishness” is sort of compounding of ignorance and pride. The ignorance is morally neutral: There are innumerable items we don’t know—and a […]
Fractional Roles
Here’s a concept I just made up. I think we play vicarious roles and sometimes only parts of these as we interface with mass media. We root for our preferred team in sports, or for our combatant in television wrestling or online computer games. We “become” various characters in the dramas and comedies we view […]
Gemeinschaftsgefuehl
This mouthful translates from the German, a feel for the togetherness-group, a social club. Alfred Adler, the individual psychologist and physician, used this term as the pro-social alternative to egotistic competition, trying to be one up. He saw it as the primary alternative to neurosis—and I agree. “I get to help” is one of my […]
Get a Life! Considering Pseudo-Reality
I think modern media and other devices offer an opportunity to expand and enrich our imaginations; beyond a certain point, though, they can dilute the effective experience and action of the self. The Psychology of Imagination Consider this hypothesis: Psyche is expandable to a startling extent. In addition to mere perceptions and actions, the human […]
Getting Personal in Experiential Learning
A friend asked me to clarify the difference between psychodrama and sociodrama and the spectra in between. He wrote, “Interestingly sometimes in the past when I started out doing a sociodrama in teaching a group of therapists come up with some themes such as how to deal with an angry patient, someone may volunteer to […]
Gimme Gimme
(Give me, give me; buy my this, get my that.) Our Sun City community association just had a vendor faire and I went and saw what they had, partly out of a sense of community cooperation. It was a trying experience, passing through rows of salespeople wanting my attention, wanting me to sign up for […]
Growing More Psychologically-Minded
It may take a century or more before even a moderate number of people become moderately psychologically-minded. Freud set this back a few decades, I fear. But even if Freud didn’t give people excuses to hate the machinations of the mind as viewed through his distorted lens, people would still avoid looking at their own […]
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 on Anxiety—Revisited
Gary Schwartz wrote a column in the February 14 Newsweek titled High on Anxiety. This is a most interesting problem that deserves much deeper investigation. What people do may not correlate with what is wise to do. Indeed, many subjects in psychological researchers may be the kinds of students whose idea of fun is getting […]
Holiday Cards? Life Moves On
‘Tis the season to be jolly, and part of that is the exchange of cards and connections. Aside from the cards exchanged, there is a small degree to which this ritual arouses mixed feelings. On one hand, I am a little hurt, if I think about it, at the degree to which people I’ve reached […]
Hoodwinked by Expert Culture?
An acquaintance wondered if I was “hoodwinked by expert culture.” What a provocative phrase! (Provocative is a compliment, because it provokes my thought, not my defensiveness.) I responded, “You might be right. Blind spots happen.” But what is “expert culture?” Is it the received knowledge of the dominant worldview, what is taught by those whom […]
How Great “We” Are
Reading a chapter in a book on Jung and Moreno (edited by Craig E. Sephenson), I was struck not only by the general theme of the ways different approaches are finding some common ground, but in particular one part of Chapter 11 by Emilijah Kiehl. She is an analytical psychologist in the London area, but […]
How Life Goes
I find the diagram known as the Shree Yantra to be a profound one that I use to exercise my imagination. In the following freehand drawing, I note within each triangle its own sort-of maze. What this symbolizes for me is this. The eight central triangles and the one that weaves them together is the […]
How Psychodrama Works
I have been contemplating how Moreno’s method works, and tentatively conclude that it makes explicit that which is done implicitly. It unfolds consciousness. Words allow the beginnings of intuition to take form, and, speaking mythically, G-d created people , evolved them painstakingly over a million years, so that they could use words. The neocortex mediates […]
How We Become
This is a contemplation that deals with the need for repeated self-creation, and builds on the system of Individual Psychology that was developed in the 1920s by Alfred Adler. Adler noted that children by the time they’re five tend to have implicitly answered—made up a story—about (1) who they are; (2) who others are; (3) […]
I Blog
I don’t have anything else to do; I’ve done it enough for almost 80 years. Now I want to sit back (literally) and comment on it, and few people may care. Maybe you. So I’m doing it for you. I realize that we are socially embedded creatures who need at least a figurative if not […]
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 […]