Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Table of Contents:
Essays and Papers
Spontaneity Development
There are needs for this skill set in a rapidly changing world. When once young people had been taught to simply follow directions, now they’re expected to not only think for themselves, but also innovate. We’ve discovered that the key to creativity is improvisation, and spontaneity development is improvisation training. For example, Justine Jones and […]
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 […]
Teasing: Another Spectrum
Teasing can range from mild joshing to outright sadism, really nasty mean. The other extreme has nothing indirect, just people being kind, tactful, appreciative. There’s a good deal of communication that’s in-between. Some people feel anxious about being perceived as being “soft” by others. Others are are coarser: they interact by introducing an an edge […]
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 “Cultural Conserve”
That was the name of the category of whatever has been conserved, even for a time. It may be for a day, for a month; it may involve sports or war news. It man celebrate or virtually moan. I realize that I have been one of the guardians of the cultural conserve in the fields […]
The Adventure of Dialogue
There’s a quality of dialogue that, when refined, illustrates an interesting dynamic: The superstars of Jesus’ childhood were the wise elders of that culture, the scholars who debated the deeper meanings of the Holy Scriptures. Two were outstanding: Rabbi Shammai and Rabbi Hillel, the former being somewhat conservative, the latter somewhat liberal, but both were […]
The Amplifying Unconscious (Part 1)
In this series of essays on my blog I am proposing the existence of not one but two types of unconscious functions: The first involves the more familiar complexes of disowned childish motivations and their associated reconciling mental maneuvers—what most psychotherapists learn about and treat. The second type of unconscious function amplifies, intensifies, and operates […]
The Art of Blogging
So perhaps we consider blogging as an art form, as valid as sculpture or dance. How much attention should I put into it? Should every piece be rehearsed, re-worked, evaluated in terms of a variety of criteria? Is it elegant, well-written, understandable, persuasive, innovative? It is the extension of easy self-publishing, that’s all. Open to […]
The Beach, the Waves…
A friend sent this, and it was poetic enough that I asked her permission to post it, and she said yes: “In my life, I am standing in the ocean and facing the beach. I love the beach; the rhythmicity of the waves relaxes me. I love the warmth of the sun, the smell […]
The Curves of Becoming
The cosmos operates in magic curves that are based on the phi ratio found throughout nature. This is the basis for the “Golden Triangle” pictured at right, a major element in sacred geometry. Sometimes things move along seemingly slowly at one level, while at a deeper level things are germinating, resting, gathering strength, reorganizing and […]
The Fragility of Memory
Evidence continues to accumulate regarding the fragility of memory. Beyond the scandal of the “recovered memory syndrome” around 1992 and other ways that distortions of memory have been used (or probably mis-used) in many kinds of legal proceedings, attention to this problem is an important corrective in our tendencies to give more authority to certain […]
The Hell with Hell
It really is time to discard completely the notion of hell. Such notions abound in many religions that believe that there really is a metaphysical reality to everlasting punishment; that that punishment involves everlasting torture (and if you think about it for a moment—even just a moment—torture is designed to be the ultimate punishment beyond […]
The Hero Process
What does it mean to have a hero, or to be a hero to someone else? In the course of your life, do you participate in anything heroic? Does heroism need to require physical daring? Super-powers? I think the word has become distorted and diluted. I want to suggest that the heroic reflects a process […]
The Impossible Dream
I was singing this song to myself, from the Broadway play of the 1960s, Man of La Mancha—, revealing my private dreams of grandiosity. These betray the mind’s capacity to think in terms of superlatives. Each is paradoxical, a way of dramatizing ambition, such as dreaming an impossible dream or fighting an unbeatable foe. They […]
The Individuality of Spirituality
This essay builds on the other essay published today, “Objective Reality,” and also points to personal expectations that go “Beyond Psychotherapy.” First, note that many of the procedures that constitute “psychotherapy” as a corrective for problematic thinking have applications beyond the medical model! They may be used for personal development, which in turn includes many […]
The Lowdown on “Flying Saucers”
My imaginative soul invites me to share with you the foollowing (sic. Which means: I meant to spell it that way) “truth” (note the quotation marks) as a form of tall tale: Of course flying saucers are real, or almost-real, or seem to be real, or definitely appear in people’s minds. That’s mainly how […]
The Meaning Instinct
I suggest that humans have an intrinsic need to construct meaning—something that orients them to the chaotic phenomena of the world. We pass along meanings as stories, myths; we organize religious-cultural systems based on these stories. It is universal. (When people become sufficiently disoriented through delerium (due to fever, some plants or medicines, some illnesses, […]
The Myth of Efficiency, Burn-out, and Role Overload
A common source of burn-out and/or employee stress in modern organizations is what I call the myth of efficiency. It assumes that there is a degree of inefficiency in work, and one of the tasks of the efficient professional or competent worker is to figure out how to “cut the fat” and detect those inefficiencies, […]
The New Sensitivity
Evolution requires periodic shifts in what we are sensitive to and what we need to learn to ignore. In the past, we had to ignore a variety of physical discomforts or psychological traumas because we simply didn’t know yet how to avoid them! Now that we do have many more ways of ensuring basic safety, […]
The Origin of Seasons
For thousands of years the Earth slept, hardly being aware that it spun about its axis every about 24 hours. But about 88, 301 years ago, a primitive lady said, about the sun, “Hey, that there evening was there yesterday, too.” Not that anyone believed her. But later that year, they conceded that she was […]
The Problem of Authority in Religion
Newsweek, February 14, 2011 , page 48, involves an article that’s sort of a book review of two recently released books that invite a re-evaluation of the common understandings of sexual mores as presented in the Bible—mainly in the Old Testament. What interested me was a statement near the end of the article. Albert Mohler, […]
The Psychology of Spirituality: Some Notes
Of course this is a vast field, but here are some observations. I was chatting with a friend who’s in the mental health field and he noted his difficulty with religion; but at the same time, seemed to be a little interested in spirituality. He mentioned John Bowlby, a psychoanalyst interested in the dynamics of […]
The Resonance of the “Wow!”
The title of this post is a bit of paradoxical apophatic musing. Apophatic refers to the stance that we—human consciousness—cannot begin to begin to know Divine essence. A degree of surrender is needed. Yet we can in our foolish innocence speculate. So also a three-year-old can talk about “my mommy” and know deeply that of […]
The Spectrum of Rational Coordination
The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) stated (as one of my favorite quotes) near the end of his book, Modes of Thought: “…The purpose of philosophy is to rationalize mysticism, not by explaining it away, but by the introduction of novel verbal characterizations, rationally coordinated.” This brief passage has impressed me mightily. (Many of Whitehead’s […]
The Truth About the Truth
We are misled by arithmetic, where, according to the rules there is one and only one “right” answer. We absorb this as ultimately true. Things we come to believe cannot have multiple explanations—there can only be one true answer. But consider that there may be multiple valid answers; there may be more than one “truth.” […]