Adam Blatner

Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner

November, 2012

Being a Little Unsure

Although I am bold enough to spout off on this blog, let’s be clear that I make no claims to being ultimately right. Often there is a varying degree of uncertainty. What brought this to mind is that I value a degree of intellectual humility. Not so much as to inhibit self-expression, but not so […]

Posted in Autobiographical, Follies, History, Psychological Literacy, Wisdom-ing | No Comments »

Spirituality and Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy might be thought of as the art of bringing people forth into a greater potential; this art rests on the implicit world-views shared by the counselor and the client. What we call faith, spirituality, and religion partake of the assumptions about what it’s all about, albeit often only superficially. This essay is in part […]

Posted in Psychotherapy and Psychiatry, Spirituality and Philosophy | No Comments »

Analysis Interminable

So my wife and I are pretty mentally healthy, but we are introspective, so we notice traces of neurosis, such as introjection of dissatisfied early attachment figures—also known as “hungry ghosts”—those for whom who we were was never enough—and we joked about it. I strongly suspect that 30 years of psychoanalysis would not suffice. “Only […]

Posted in Psychological Literacy, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry, Spirituality and Philosophy | No Comments »

“Medical-ization”

This is the tendency to treat things as if they were a disease when instead they should be better imagined as something else, such as a common problem in ordinary life. A friend suggested that a number of conditions are “medicalized”—implying that they should not be. This is really interesting from multiple viewpoints. When is […]

Posted in Current Events, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry | No Comments »

Perspectives on “Mental Illness”

Things have changed: Different types of “mental illness” need to be discerned. Certainly the history of medicine includes as a them the recognition that, for example, some diseases that seemed to be infectious were actually due to nutritional deficiency—such as pellagra. Similarly, a number of major mental illnesses such as “dementia paralytica” that was a […]

Posted in Book Reviews, Current Events, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry | 1 Comment »

The “Sweet Spot” of Faith-ing

It turns out that we are far from able to create our living completely. Humanity is as yet quite immature and in need of help from those angels (for want of a better word to call “them”)—forces, energy fields, guardian spirits, agents of the Great Creative Source, whatever—that are mysterious and yet incredibly capable. Those […]

Posted in Spirituality and Philosophy, Wisdom-ing | No Comments »

Confabulations: The Series

If you search the word “confabulations” on this blog-site, you’ll find a number devoted to this word, and more are being added. These were also webpages on my website under the sub-heading of “Fooling around”.  Over time I will add more and transfer over others. How else but through play can I suggest possibilities for […]

Posted in Foolin Around, Mind-Spectrums, Spirituality and Philosophy, Zordak's Journal | No Comments »

Confabulations 22: Spectrums of Consciousness (I)

My son David just wrote a book titled Spectrums, and I highly recommend it. But I want to note an interesting thing: We seem to be in the middle, using our tools to extend our perception of what’s going on in all directions. It might be, theoretically, that we only appear to be in the middle […]

Posted in Foolin Around | No Comments »

“Nonverbal Awareness”

What else can I call the mental alertness to one’s own nonverbal behavior. There are those who are attentive to their appearance regarding make-up, hair-do, clothes, but few people pay attention to the way they behave: Check out posture, eye angle, length of eye contact, tendency to smile or frown, etc. Let it be a […]

Posted in Psychodrama, Psychological Literacy, Psychology, Social-Depth Psychology (Sociometry) | 1 Comment »

Mean Play versus Nice Play

A recent item has been circulating as a piece of internet humor, in which a bored husband plays a whole bunch of practical jokes in a store that’s part of a major retail chain. On one hand, I enjoyed it and laughed… but on the other hand, what is described is is an example of […]

Posted in Foolin Around, Play and Spontaneity, Wisdom-ing | No Comments »

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