Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
“Surplus” Reality? What a Concept!
Originally posted on July 26, 2018
It’s time for noting that the arts—especially drama—can offer simulations—which is doing but yet not doing, like kids at sociodramatic play—exploring so many dimensions. What would I sound like if I talked this way? Moved this way? No, moved THIS way? Try it out, adjust it. It’s a far more multi-modal experiment.
It’s time also for noting that it’s not "just for therapy," but for everyone! Many arts therapists know this implicitly but t needs to be stated explicitly. In fact, relatively healthy people make better use of playing it out, trying it out, than sicker people!
It’s time for a move into “fuller living.” That may become a title of a paper! Maybe a whole magazine! We all could benefit from "fuller" living. We don’t need it—we’re okay. But that’s like saying we don’t NEED a trip to Disneyland.
It’s what J. L. Moreno, M.D., the inventor of psychodrama, to which I have devoted some of my life’s energies, what Moreno meant by his term, "surplus" reality. What a radical idea, meta-physically! We are moving into utilizing the space and time around us, using the arts, to live bigger lives than we thought we could.
We fantasized, but drama lets us experience, just a little bit. That’s good! People played with us and made it more. For example, I live with other alter egos, as does my wife—and "we" partake of correspondingly more "life"—even if it’s "just pretend" than most people. Larger than life is the goal.
Adam, we live in an imaginary state of being. Our imaginations create our reality. And the reality is in the form of imagined narratives. Dreams are our imaginations creating narratives – but that doesn’t stop when we awake. Even awake our subconscious just keeps on dreaming. The narratives we create are all connected by analogy, and these connected narratives create a subconscious narrative architecture that is our personality. Also, we are predisposed to desire to learn other people’s narratives or stories. Drama is one of the ways these “other” narratives are taught to us.