Adam Blatner

Welcome to my blog—this is a new toy that my son set up for me. (He’s quite knowledgeable about computer stuff—you can google him (David Blatner) and come up with scores of thousands of hits!)

When I was young, my cultural tradition was to have your kids in some ways make more progress that you did, finish school, maybe even go to college. The first generation over from the Old Country—if you could make a living and set your kids up so they could do well in business, this was a success. In the 1920s through the 1940s and beyond, there were still quotas in professional schools that limited the number of Jews who could attend. The 2nd generation, though, wanted their kids to do even better: “Mine son the doctor” was a kind of comic cliche. Lawyer was good, dentist and CPA, pretty good. Such were the status hierarchies in this immigrant group in that historical 1940s – 1950s era. (What have they been for the Asian-Americans in the last six decades—and for other immigration groups?)

So now—although I’m sort of a third-generation mind, culturally—though in fact I’m a 2nd generation actually— and I’m the doctor, my son can’t trump that so easily, so he’s gone into a field that I couldn’t anticipate! Who knew there would be such a thing? But I’m proud, now, because he gets more hits than I do on Google. Is that a success? (What will it be the status symbols for his sons—my grandsons—, in twenty years of continued postmodernist acceleration of change?

Anyway, what you’ll find here are reflections in many fields: Mainly, I’m into contemporary philosophy, consciousness transformation (what is that?), trends in psychology, helping to make these concepts mainstream; I’m interested a little in esoteric subjects such as kabbalah, but that interest goes up and down. I want to see Whitehead’s and Hartshorne’s “process philosophy” appreciated more.

I have continuing interest in some old professional fields—psychiatry, psychotherapy, psychodrama (therapeutic role playing), social psychology, etc.—mainly as they speak to how can psychology be applied today, and not just by professionals. I want to see the best insights harvested and used in everyday life.

Imagination and playfulness is another dimension I want to see woven in, and I engage in my own larks and foolin’ around. Cartooning is a sub-interest and you may see some of those in time. Speaking to other forms of expression—singing, dancing, especially as they are made accessible to ordinary people and made free of the demand to “do it right” or “do it well”— this is another thing I want to see blossom in the world.

So you’ll see some of these themes addressed. Mainly, I hope you’ll use this blog as a springboard to check out or browse among my other websites: There I have longer papers, essays, that address in greater depth various themes we touch on in these pages.
The website: www.interactiveimprov.com Speaks to the cutting edge of how drama may be used to make our communications more effective and holistically authentic. Mere discussion is better than flinging accusations or spouting opinions, but we can do even better, we can encounter and explore ideas and differences with a view to coming up with creative syntheses and alternatives.
The website www.blatner.com/adam/ Has lots of my other stuff. Browse and skim around. I’ll be revising these over time, too.

How to Get the Most out of a Blog: I don’t know yet. Invite discussions?