Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Table of Contents:
History
Paradigm Shifts and Action Explorations
This blog poet also might be titled “Psychodrama Beyond the Medical Model.” Psychodrama is mostly used as psychotherapy, but a sizable component does not require the medical model! While psychodrama as psychotherapy is being squeezed out by evidence-based medicine, let’s let Moreno’s work find new life as “creativity expansion” or “action explorations.” This opens to […]
Passover—a New Interpretation
Those interested in spirituality—in any religion—often seek to make that which is traditional more relevant. Some thirty or more years ago I was impressed by a Passover “Seder” or special ritual dinner in which the host re-interpreted the process of remembrance not from the perspective of a more ethnic or national group, but rather as […]
Personal Myth: Considerations (I)
This has come up as a theme in our culture and evokes various thoughts. In the olden days there was no such thing as “myth,” much less personal myth. In our tribe, we all learned the stories about how it really was, and came to believe that was so. Then there were unbelievers, but we […]
Play as the Basis for Innovation
As work shifts from mechanical repetition to innovation, what it takes to promote innovation becomes clear: Play. Some essential elements in playfulness involve exploration, experimentation, and doing so with optimal freedom from fear of failure. This state of mind in turn opens to inspiration. (Inspiration tends to happen far less often when there is any […]
Postmodern Vocabulary: Logocentricity, Marginalization, Privilege, etc.
New words can help us think clearly about new concepts. It isn’t that we’re just trying to be fancy. Old words don’t address the meaning at all. For example, here are some words that help me think about new trends: Logocentricity is a word that suggests that someone speaks in a mode of discourse (or […]
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 […]
Proto-Mayanoid Higher Math Problem
My friend Zordak, the inter-dimensional flying-saucer lil’ green alien, showed me this: His explanation is that the Proto-Mayans do indeed do a complex equivalent of higher mathematics, with equations-like problems. The Proto-Mayans were a group of higher dimensional beings, sort of a star-trek gang, who visited the emerging cultures of Central America about 3000 years […]
Psychiatry History
Yesterday I put up some ideas about permeability that in their implications, metaphysically, may challenge the entire materialistic and positivistic paradigm of the modern era. Lest I seem grandiose, it’s only speculation. I might well be mistaken. But still, that’s my role, to fool around, to explore, to draw cartoons, dance, joke, get serious, get […]
Reflections on the History of Consciousness
I’m sensing that we live in a time when changes are speeding up in so many ways. One “window” on change that I’m closer to is the history of medicine. Another “window” is the history of science. I was reading an interesting book that noted a literal shift in world-views, from a geocentric to a […]
Semantics
As we enter the election cycle, I call upon an old cartoon by Gary Trudeau, regard-ing the old British Petroleum oil spill. He notes snappy words and dismisses dull words or those with negative connotations. Spin doctoring. Manipulating. As we hear rhetoric about making America great (without any specific plans), we are asked to suspend […]
Shakespeare Authorship
Who really wr9te the early 17th-Century plays commonly attributed to Will-iam Shakespeare? Sir Henry Neville! I have a friend, Dr. John Casson, living in northern England, who wrote a book about one of my interests, titled Drama, Psychotherapy and Psychosis. It’s about dramatherapy and psychodrama with people who hear voices, a groundbreaking book based on […]
Should Cruelty Be Considered Insanity?
I object to the conflation of mental illness and inhumanity. Only rarely is deep mental illness associated with cruelty. It does happen, but never on a broad scale. Were the Nazis who so methodically pursued the “Final Solution” merely nuts? Were the Hutus who engaged in genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda insane? In my […]
Some Personal Myths
Reading excerpts from Rollo May’s 1990 book, The Cry for Myth, reminded me that I am fortunate to have a number of mythic structures that help me feel grounded in my life. First, there is a myth of progress. At first, I felt this by joining a profession with an ancient tradition and major social […]
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 […]
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 Great Story (Video)
In 2010 I gave a lecture series (posted on my website) about the history of the cosmos as far as we know. It’s called “The Great Story.” Recently someone sent me a video montage only 2 minutes long that recaptures the drama to some degree. Take a look, and then visit my webpages that explain […]
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 […]
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 Seven Ages of Man
(Words by William Shakespeare; Cartoons by Adam Blatner) [Adam’s note: As a teenager, I read the works of William Shakespeare, took a class in school, enjoyed the shaping of words, declaiming, enunciating, the feel of his rhythms. (I was in a local high school contest once, where I recited and enacted the “tennis ball” speech in […]
The Un-Acknowledged
I am reminded that for much of the world, what is history for us goes unspoken! Indeed, there are peoples who live with massive repression! Let’s not talk about that! Let’s not even THINK about that! Indeed, that is a way of life for perhaps most of the people in the world! I’m fortunate indeed […]
The Whizzard of Ahs
This is a bit of an autobiographical contemplation: Perhaps I too am a bit like the Wizard of Oz, not a great wizard, but really a good man. Maybe my name in another story would be “The Wise Art of Ah’s” or the “Whizzerd.” Anyway, the point of this post is: Who is to say. […]
This Moment in Time
There’s a song with that title and first line. I’ve been a fan of Jewish humor, especially in the mid-20th Century. I picked up “The Myron Cohen Joke Book” (New York: Gramercy Press) and have been leafing through it. It reminded me that I’ve enjoyed humor and cartoons, joke books of various types, all my […]