Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
October, 2013
Those Were the Days
Listening to a Sinatra tape on my portable tape recorder—there are some of ‘em still around!—and thinking some smug thoughts! No doubt folks who liked songs before the 1920s and after the 1980s have a nice repertoire and good memories—I think—but the mid-20th century was blessed with evocative and poetic songs. Oh, of course, some […]
Posted in Autobiographical, History | No Comments »
Halloween Contemplation 2013
Fear is an amazingly primal instinct, and you can see it in birds and deer and squirrels—they look around, their ears (if you can see them) prick up: What’s that strange sound? Babies get waves of strangeness and they startle and cry. Or for other reasons they become uncomfortable. At some point they enjoy quieting […]
Posted in Play and Spontaneity, Psychological Literacy, Psychology | 1 Comment »
“Wisdom-ing”
As I reflect on life and mind, I think that the word “wisdom” would better be appreciated as a verb: “wisdom-ing.” It is something you do, not are. One doesn’t “have” wisdom, or even “attain” wisdom, as if, once attained, is sustained by its own power. Rather, wisdom-ing is a doing, an activity. When and […]
Posted in Psychological Literacy, Spirituality and Philosophy, Wisdom-ing | No Comments »
Bibliophilia
I am a bibliophiliac, a mild addict, not so much in the sense of seeking collections per se, but really interested in what the books say in certain fields. This New Yorker cover describes my living room, not to speak of several other rooms with many bookcases. I realized that not many people have this […]
Posted in Autobiographical, Foolin Around, Scriptology | No Comments »
Challenging Assumptions
The new President of our local Southwestern University, Professor Edward Burger , was written up in the college’s magazine. He had also recently given a guest lecture to my class at Senior University Georgetown, our local lifelong learning program. My series has been about “Thinking about Thinking,” and his talk was about effective thinking. He […]
Posted in Psychological Literacy, Spirituality and Philosophy, Wisdom-ing | No Comments »
Diagnosis and Therapy in Psychiatry
As the American Psychiatric Association has now come out with their fifth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual—the DSM-5—a number of controversies have arisen. My critique aims at a fairly basic theme: Should we think of all psychiatric disorders as a unitary category, or might they be as different as, say, skin rashes or […]
Posted in Current Events, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry | 1 Comment »
My Quiet Rebellion
Me? a rebel? No way. I was so intimidated by everyone who was so sure of themselves and I certainly wasn’t. But on the other hand, as mind is wont to do, I did secretly rebel. I didn’t know that it was a rebellion until a few decades ago. It was disguised as a simple […]
Posted in Autobiographical, Psychological Literacy, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry | No Comments »
Growing Up in Paradise
Well, there were a number of elements in my childhood that were not paradisiacal, but on the other hand, there were some. The location of my home in my early years was one, the subject of this blog. I grew up in Los Angeles about half-way between Hollywood and Beverly Hills, in an area bounded […]
Posted in Autobiographical, Play and Spontaneity | No Comments »
Doin’ Its Own Thing
Everything is doin’ its own thing, follows what the ancient South Asian Indian scriptures call its “dharma.” But the thing that everything is doing is vastly inter-dimensional, connected to many, many other things doin’ their own thing. Gravity, aesthetics, patterns, symbiotic connections, underlying similarities, the list goes on. Some things are more rapidly eventful than […]
Posted in Art (Mandalas, Doodles, Scripts), Autobiographical, Play and Spontaneity, Zordak's Journal | No Comments »