Adam Blatner

I have a very diversified portfolio of roles. I’m thinking of reorganizing my website to reflect this, because there is a gradual decline in the degrees of investment of time and energy given to the more professional roles and a gradual increase in the levels of activity in more playful and life-savoring roles. At present my website seems to imply that I am primarily involved in my roles as professional, psychiatrist, psychotherapist, psychodramatist. These are valid roles, but they’re drifting off center stage. Moving towards center stage are several characters—philosopher, play-promoter, imagination-ologist, master (or at least pretty good-er) of confabulation, with an admixture of involvements in dancing, singing, cartooning, reading, lecturing on various non-professional topics, and so forth.

“Who am I?” becomes increasingly a will-o’-the-wisp and a non-question. Walt Whitman expressed my situation in his long poem, Song of Myself, section 51: Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself! (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Sometimes I want to be known and recognized in my more scholarly and professional roles! Yes, I earned many degrees and certifications, I speak with authority! But at other times I want to take of the Herr Professor-Doctor hat and put on a gimme cap and just be this guy, y’know? I’m just foolin’ around in this other self. Sometimes I’m helper-around-the-house and sometimes part-of-the-gang. Sometimes Pop and sometimes Grandpopala and sometimes “My pet” in the eyes of my mid-90s mother-in-law. So many roles get put on and taken off like a kid at a trunk-full of dress-up hats and clothes! Within all these I do try to weave the continuity of love and joy, gentleness and kindness, light-heartedness and compassion. It’s a fun game—individuation and integration.