Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Table of Contents:
Psychological Literacy
Spontaneity Development
I met a woman who teaches a type of sport to teenagers—I’ll leave the specifics out for the sake of confidentiality—, and her point is to help the youngsters show some drama, liveliness, the opposite of seeming “wooden” to onlookers. The kids are so intent at performing well that their faces seem fixed: all their […]
Square Dancing as Spiritual Practice
I went square dancing last night and it is a particularly wholesome experience. It occurred to me that square dancing is also a spiritual activity. On the surface, the dancers, groups of four couples (eight people), are teams that are just trying to follow directions. They’ve learned the calls, but they’re just complex enough so […]
Story-telling and Truth
People keep up their interests by wondering about what happens: Did it have to happen that way? What was behind what happened. Why did he do it that way and why did she take it this way? What might happen next and what might lead up to that? Which factors contributed to this situation? What […]
Strung Out and Spread Thin
Perhaps I’m being a sort of "Cassandra here, shaking my tambourine and prophesying, but it must be said: “Overload!” The information explosion and media glut has arrived. We are in exponential times, with accelerating everything. The trickle became a creek, a stream, a river, a delta, a flood, an ocean, and a tsunami, all in […]
Subtle Arrogance?
What other term should be used for the all-too-common set that doesn’t recognize vividly that it might be mistaken, or limited? The illusion that what one knows is sufficient is the foundation of a great deal of error, and error can easily be magnified into great evil! This is an amplification of the words of […]
Subtle Oppressions (I): Role Overload
There’s a rather unpleasant yet widespread story that if a frog is put into hot water it will jump out, but if put into cold water and the water is very gradually heated, the frog won’t notice until it dies of hyperthermia (i.e., too high temperature for life). I don’t know that this is even […]
Surrealism’s Relevance
Creativity is our new meme—the theme that is relevant for our time. The surrealistic artists anticipated this by a century, but so much creativity has characterized the many “inventions” of the 20th and beginning 21st century that it’s time we became aware that, as the philosopher Nikolai Berdyayev said (in Rissian), “Be creative, and foster […]
Symbols of Selfhood
On my website I write about the experience of being a coherent “self” as an aggregate experience, a sort of sum of a score or more of different types of sensory and cognitive input, and each type may in turn have numerous sources. These become more intense or more dilute, and sometimes other experiences happen […]
Taking Stock
This phrase is used as an opening to an idea that people should re-evaluate their lives periodically, perhaps as often as they change-up their computer systems. Changing circumstances, growing maturity, refined values, all are appropriately met with a taking of time, respecting oneself enough, to take stock of priorities. Since life is so complex and […]
That’s What It’s All About! (General Philosophy)
This conclusion in the song, “The Hokey Pokey,” addresses the existential and widespread question: What is it all about? What is the purpose of the Cosmos? What is God’s purpose for Humanity? What is the Meaning of my life? Happily, I have an answer. I’m not saying it’s the right answer, or the final answer, […]
The “Ethos of Effort”
This term refers to the un-thought-out valuing of effort, trying hard, doing your best. I was a little delayed in popping out of bed, enjoying the relaxation of sleeping, then enjoying a relaxed contemplation, but I was a little jolted by a guilt spasm at my lackadaisical behavior. I heard the line from and old […]
The Adaptive Unconscious (Book Review)
Timothy D. Wilson, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, wrote a lovely book titled “Strangers to ourselves: discovering the adaptive unconscious. (2002, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap press of Harvard University Press). Lovely book that is worth studying. It seems to me that it overlaps with my theory of the Amplified Unconscious, and, indeed, I […]
The Amplifying Unconscious (Part 2)
[Please see Part 1 for an introduction to this: I am suggesting a second type of unconscious process that is far more powerful, less rational, far quicker in processing, far more clever, and that this hypothesis accounts for many previously-inexplicable psychological phenomena.] The Ordinary “Muddled Middle” Unconscious I’m a psychiatrist who was trained in the […]
The Amplifying Unconscious (Part 5)
This continues my reflections on what has occurred to me as a parallel, more “powerful” function of the unconscious. Today I’ll talk about dreams, the problem of “control,” and the nature of inspiration. As I’ve noted, this process seems to be more compelling, more able to capture our minds in the web of illusion and […]
The Archetype of Complacence
This phrase describes the deep tendency, when we learn or discover or invent something, to settle into that novelty as if it’s the end-point. Of course, it is not: There is always more to know, discover, and further refinements to whatever we invent or use. Since we don’t know what might be better, our experience […]
The Breadth of Being-ness
On my website I’ve posted a more lengthy paper about how it would be better for us to imagine that our sense of self expand beyond the boundaries of our brain and body to include not only close relationships, but our participation in wider social networks. (Some of you may know that my career and […]
The Dramaturgical Model
I have been involved with psychodrama for 50 years and have written books about it. The idea of life-as-drama is intriguing. I have taught “psychological literacy” to senior adults and I realized another point about this: It’s time that practical psychology escapes from the clutches of academia! Practical psychology should be like reading and writing […]
The Experience of Vitality
Joseph Campbell (1904-1987), the noted pioneer of contemporary views of mythology, wrote: “People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will […]
The Fuddy-Duddy Complex
This is a complex of a number of associated images, thoughts, and feelings that emerge regarding the theme of entertaining opinions and judgments about things that really don’t concern you. It occurred to me that this is a not uncommon theme for parents of adult children whose life choices differ in various ways from your […]
The Gestalt Function
There’s a function of the mind called “Gestalt” that’s not “Gestalt therapy” but rather the innate tendency to see meaningful patterns in what is perceived. The mind tends to see things as wholes. Shown a series of still pictures quickly enough, it generates the illusion of motion (and from this, movies and television). The Gestalt […]
The Higher “I”
I’ve become increasingly aware that I’m only part-way between me and not-me. There are parts of me that are spontaneous, and realistically speaking I should not take credit for these parts or their products. I’m tempted to say, like Jack Horner in the nursery rhyme, “Oh, what a good boy am I!” But a couple […]
The Higher Unconscious
The unconscious is not less conscious but more! It’s not just pushed down; it’s not just “Let’s not look at what we’re doing,”—i.e., repression—but rather what we’re doing you couldn’t begin to understand! What if the unconscious is super-con-scious and much faster and more clever than you can be. Some of it is influenced by […]
The Human Potential Movement Revisited
I realized this morning that my life is to some degree a “product” of the Human Potential Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This was a sub-cultural movement that blossomed in urban centers, more vividly in the greater San Francisco Bay Area and nearby regions (such as the Esalen Institute about 100 miles […]