Adam Blatner

This is a category I just realized describes me. There was a funny skit on the old (mid-1970s) television show, “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” with the punch line for an actor who freaked out if one said “mattress” in his presence. His supervisor explained:  "Other than that, he’s perfectly normal." I have adopted this sentence for a blog title some years’ back, or maybe the title of my autobiography.

For the borderline healthy, cultivating the arts to express the crazy,  mad parts  is "sublimation" —a healthy defense mechanism. I do it all the time. You know, I’m crazy, a little, and I admit it; but I sublimate my really crazy impulses (which I have, as well as other so-called-normal humans), so I play with them. For example, I have a villainous alter ego: “Doctor” (if you please) Snidely Whiplash, editor of the well-known (well, not so very well-known) Journal of Punitive Psychiatry (motto: I’ll give you what to cry for"). One of my cartoon characters, Dr. Whiplash looks just like a typical melodrama villain.

Indeed, I have a goodly number of alter egos. Some day our great-grandchilren will make fun of people who are “only” one personality. Multiple personality ORDER will be “normal.” It’s a way of sublimating and balancing our personalities. We’re all borderline healthy.