Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
February, 2014
Effective Love Requires More Consciousness
I recently read an email advocating the virtues of love of humanity and a quote from Albert Einstein about the ultimate unity of life. I agree, being a person of my time, subject to the idealistic paradigms of what civilization seemed to be reaching for. Yet it also stimulated in me a contemplation of why […]
Posted in Follies, History, Psychological Literacy, Spirituality and Philosophy | 1 Comment »
Ego, Memory, and Forgetfulness
I have been contemplating the sheer vulnerability of my memories, and the innate elusiveness of so many of the experiences that part of me wants to cling to. I want to have these experiences whenever I want to access them, as if they were kept possessions, treasures. Well, that’s one of the things ego does. […]
Posted in Autobiographical, History, Play and Spontaneity, Psychological Literacy, Spirituality and Philosophy | No Comments »
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 […]
Posted in Current Events, History, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry | No Comments »
Doubling: Helping to Express the Unspeakable
Sometimes poets and songwriters say well what one can hardly express. A successful poem or song can express more poignantly, or beautifully than people’s more mundane feelings and thoughts. I’m reminded of a verse by a song sung by Roberta Flack in the 1970s, “Killing Me Softly:” “I heard he sang a good song, I […]
Posted in Mind-Spectrums, Psychodrama, Psychological Literacy | No Comments »