Adam Blatner

Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner

March, 2015

Word Meanings Change

The word, “mysticism” has changed over time, from something weird and magical and ultimately superstitious to an underlying set of assumptions woven into story form, the way Joseph Campbell has re-worked the word and the field in the mid-late 20th Century. The word “gay” has similarly changed meaning, from carefree to homosexual. Yet many people […]

Posted in Book Reviews, History, Wisdom-ing | No Comments »

Elementary Arts Education

So much of arts education seems to be targeted at an audience as an act of impressing people: See how good I am. Okay, there’s a place for that. But what occurs to me is that doing expressive arts may involve several levels of competence and talent, and only the upper levels—the ones requiring talent […]

Posted in Art (Mandalas, Doodles, Scripts), Foolin Around, Play and Spontaneity, Psychodrama | No Comments »

The Low-Down on the Higher-Ups

They aren’t really “higher,” or at least not in all ways. Rather, there are other dimensions, more than 4 dimensions. For example, I have a memory of a past life when I was an elf in Santa’s workshop  (level 9 row 4, choo-choo train assembly line. We elves were sooo excited to be part of […]

Posted in Autobiographical, Foolin Around, World of Almost-Real | 1 Comment »

The Problem with Holistic Medicine

Holistic and alternative medicine has been largely coopted by quacks. This is not to say that some of its approaches are valid. I suspect they are, and indeed that they will induce a revolution or two in the field. However, there are 1000 alternative holistic approaches out there and 950 are probably not valid, in […]

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

Shame: An Underestimated Dynamic

I think shame should be recognized as being as toxic as lead or scaring kids with descriptions of hell. And many medical conditions have a “final common pathway,” a certain rash, headache, fever. I think shame and guilt—they overlap in many ways, although some differences might be discerned—also generate a kind of shrinkage, a somato-psychic […]

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

Comics—Positive vs Negative

So many comics have been "dark"—feeding on the "dark side"– while I turn towards the light if I can, and enjoy happier commentaries. Still, I get pulled into the dark on occasion. I have come to recognize that this is a theme in comics or stylized illustration—a theme of dark versus light. Alas, comics are […]

Posted in Art (Mandalas, Doodles, Scripts), Foolin Around, World of Almost-Real | No Comments »

Mystery Seeks Meaning

mystery seeks meaning   myth fills in, expressing mind’s compulsion to create story Not exactly a haiku, but an intuitive hint of transcendental philosophy. Indeed, what if contemporary speculations are cosmologies are higher order examples of  complications of a sequence of mystery, myth, story, religion, spirituality, metaphysical philosophy? Given ambiguity, intuited patterns will coalesce. Saying […]

Posted in Spirituality and Philosophy | No Comments »

Neurosis: Its Origins

I confess that I am taken somewhat with the new theories of neuroscience that serve as a testable biological source of neurosis and psychosis, but in spite of my wanting to expand psychoanalysis radically, including issues such as temperament and cultural and social issues, I really think that fully half of significant psychiatric disorders—often with […]

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

“Make New Friends but Keep the Old”

I used to sing the above as a simple song, a round, in fact. A camp song:    Make new friends, but keep the old:    One is silver and the other gold. Is it true anymore? I wondered recently. Or does it depend on reciprocity. When I learned this little tune, I had no […]

Posted in Autobiographical, Social-Depth Psychology (Sociometry) | No Comments »

Unpronounceable Phoneme

People who are confined by the anatomy of their mouths and sounds that are limited by the sound-spectrum in three dimensions miss out on so much. My angelic friends—those who dwell in 5-6 dimensions—love us but in an understanding way, “pity” us our limitations. This phoneme—rough translation for a building block of a process that’s […]

Posted in Foolin Around, World of Almost-Real | 1 Comment »

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