Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Table of Contents:
Psychological Literacy
Philosophy: A Spectrum of Coherence
For many people it doesn’t take that much rational coordination to sustain a viable philosophy of life. Such a system can be sufficiently developed and maintained using a limited number of relatively self-evident platitudes and general social norms, loosely assembled and supported by one’s peer group. Interestingly, all that is needed is the illusion of […]
Play: “Vitamin P” for Optimal Vitality
I went into psychiatry because (1) I truly loved medicine, both the learning what we presently know about the astonishing complexities of the workings of our mind-body; and (2) more specifically, as I got into it, I found the workings of the mind-part even more of a challenge, as well as the channel through which […]
Postmodern Words—But Useful
I confess that reading postmodernist tracts is confusing and annoying—they assume the readers know their jargon. If that were true, they are truly preaching to the choir, as the saying goes. Still and all, there are some new words that I’ve found to be useful, valid, and worth spreading the word about. Logocentric: This word […]
Power of Words
I’m going to a conference titled “The Power of Words,” in Kansas in mid-September. I’ll be presenting on Role Theory as a User Friendly Language in Life. Words mean different things to different people Speaking of semantics, a friend sent me this by Simone Weil, page 271 from her Simone Weil Reader, titled, “Power of […]
Pre-Hallowe’en (2017)
It’s late September and already I saw displays of spooky sculptures and candy and such at the local drug store! It’s a time to be something other than who most people think you are. Your dark side—just kidding! But it’s true that the mind is multi-dimensional and evil as well as good is accessible and […]
Premature Closure: Some Thoughts
In a book I’ve recently begun to read, Exploring Happiness: from Aristotle to Brain Science, by Sissela Bok (2010, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), I was struck by the author’s use of the idea of premature closure. That term is also used by Erik H. Erikson as a pitfall of adolescence. It means that […]
Principles of Action Explorations
In a sense, this is a bit of a personal mission statement: I have been fortunate to encounter a goodly number of tools that I think can help humanity evolve in their consciousness. I plan to develop and promote these ideas and complexes of ideas, together and separately: 1. The goals of living become more […]
Promoting “Psychological Literacy”
In some ways, I’m actually a little behind—technologically—and more than a bit out of it—because I don’t have a television set, don’t see many movies, don’t know or care about several major sectors of popular culture (e.g., movies, sports, celebrities, television shows)! But also I realized today that in a few ways I am perhaps […]
Prosopagnosia and Other Ability Differences
In the New Yorker of August 30, 2010, Oliver Sacks wrote an article titled “Face-blind: the perils of prosopagnosia” (pp. 36-43). He himself has a moderate case of this difficulty in recognizing other people’s faces, and sometimes even neighborhoods, unless there are other guiding cues he can use to remind himself. This seems to be […]
Psychiatric Practice: Not What It Was
A colleague recently asked me why I was not still in practice. I felt awkward, because if I kept up with the news, I could be just as good a clinician as I ever was—and my wife said she thought I was pretty good—as have some colleagues, etc. But the field has changed! In the […]
Psychodrama, Positive Psychology, etc.
Psychodrama offers a less specific type of positive psychology. The actual founder of PP is Martin Seligman, of course, but Seligman built on a number of previous workers. Barbara Fredrickson is another pioneer in PP. Neither bothers acknow-ledging Moreno, but I think Moreno (who created psychodrama) should be thought of as a pioneer also, whether […]
Psychological Literacy
Twenty years ago as part of my teaching at the Senior University Georgetown I gave lectures on “Psychological Literacy.” It seemed to me that it’s time to push for psychology to be taught in school as a primary topic. I looked over the names of the theories and theoreticians, and so much may be remembered […]
Psychological Literacy: Further Comments
In the June 7, 2010 issue of the New Yorker on page 21 there is an article about whether college is really cost-effective. My attention was caught by the statement that skills appropriate to the workplace include the ability to “resolve conflict and negotiate,” “cooperate with others,” and “listen actively.” What strikes me here is […]
Psychological Theory: Both / And
J. L. Moreno, M.D. (1889-1974) was prescient in some ways; but not in others. He was right in noticing the deficiencies of psychoanalysis, but he was biased in his own favor. Theories of psychology or psychopathology were at that time either/or not both/and, and it didn’t occur to Moreno to be more inclusive. Moreno’s insight […]
Psychological-Mindedness Confronts Simplicity
People have a deep sense of entitlement to being able to perceive and think about the world in simple terms. It’s easier to imagine that there is either sin or virtue, and we still have a subtle backwash from the belief in higher and lower classes. People feel entitled to scold: “Don’t muddy up the […]
Re-Doing Your Philosophy of Life
Everyone generates a meaning system. Most often it is an unconscious set of assumptions that help you make sense out of things. Alfred Adler (a physician who was an earlier associate of Freud but then dropped away because of his own independent ideas) observed that children around the age of five begin to have provisional […]
Re-Juvenile
Thinking of Christopher Noxon’s book, “Re-Juvenile,” (New York: Crown Publishing, 2006), generally I enjoyed it. I think the author speaks to the hunger for a re-integration of the best elements of child-like-ness, as I talked about in my book, The Art of Play, now being revised. However, the language is problematical. I described the value […]
Re-Narrating Your Life
I wrote about this previously under the title, “Creating Your Living,” but that was not the best phrase. You don’t create what you do, but you create how you describe what you do, or did. Indeed, how you describe it makes it anywhere from tragic to annoying, from good enough to glorious. You’re playing with […]
Re-Thinking “Disorders”
I just read that "federal health officials" said that, using a wider screening for "autism spectrum disorders," guess what: more kids are picked up who fit the broader or looser criteria. Duh. If you loosen the criteria on anything, that increases the sensitivity to shades on what used to be the borderline and you’ll pick […]
Re-Thinking “Philosophy”
My dear wife Allee said that everyone had a philosophy of life, either implicit or explicit. I disagreed, saying that the word was appropriate only when there was some effort to rationally coordinate the different elements (to draw a phrase from Whitehead near the end of his book, Modes of Thought). I’ve come to see […]
Reasons to Scowl
On the airplane home I noticed some scowling folks and I was tempted to judge them for being a little grumpy; but then, I shifted to a compassionate contemplation of why they might be scowling and jotted down the notes that led to the items listed below. I confess that I’ve been rather happy about […]
Recognizing Shame
I have two friends, Sheila Rubin, LMFT & Bret Lyon, Ph.D, who write about the dynamics of shame, and give workshops on this topic. It’s a basic theme in psychology and needs to be addressed. Many of those who really need therapy need also to treat their shame, as shame complicates their disorder. Many get […]
Reconsidering the Oedipal Complex
I’m thinking that a little bit of this is a good thing. I was watching an attractive young mother coo over her baby, about 9 months old, and I thought, “Hm, I want an Oedipal complex. I don’t want to marry Mom or have sex with her, but I do want her to absolutely delight […]