Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Introversion
Lately I’ve come to appreciate even more Carl Jung’s ideas about introversion and extraversion, especially as I’ve watched my own fluctuations of mental “energy.” I get drained by external stimuli, distracted, overloaded, rather than energized by these sources; on the other hand, I am energized when I can process ideas through my own active creativity. […]
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Paparazzi Play Set
On a recent trip to California, in Santa Monica (west of Los Angeles), on their “Promenade” of special shops near the beach, they had a toy shop with various toys, including those little sets of toy soldiers or medieval knights. What struck me was a set of these little figures titled “Paparazzi Play Set.” It […]
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Beyond Narcissism: Ideal Child Development
This mini-essay is aimed at broadening our sense of what the core motivations are for children (and adults). The Freudian view has been excessively reductionistic, and even more contemporary efforts to expand the set of what are considered to be core motivations don’t go far enough. The concept of “primary narcissism” in particular is a […]
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Economic Sociology: A Fresh View
I’ve been thinking about what helps people find and sustain an optimal level of a sense of social connectedness. It occurred to me that part of the problem is that it seems mundane, almost a matter of economics—not of money, but of an exchange of talent and interest. Sure, there are some elements of non-neurotic […]
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Hermeneutics: The Art of Interpretation
In fields that have to do with mind, more than in the hard sciences, there is a major expansion of the influence of various points of view. Fields such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, economics, politics, communications studies, and so forth all are embedded in matrices of viewpoints. These viewpoints include such variables as factuality, […]
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Dimensional Metaphysics
This is a short essay on the plausibility of considering mind to be a dimension, a category of actuality that interpenetrates with all the other dimensions of time, space, matter and energy. In the last two centuries we have discovered the existence of realms of existence that we hadn’t known about before, that are not […]
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The Fuddy-Duddy Complex
This is a complex of a number of associated images, thoughts, and feelings that emerge regarding the theme of entertaining opinions and judgments about things that really don’t concern you. It occurred to me that this is a not uncommon theme for parents of adult children whose life choices differ in various ways from your […]
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Two Aspects of Religion
Traditional religions combined law and spirituality, but in the modern age, law and civility in general has become separated from the more mythic elements of spirituality. Where there has evolved a rather vigorous sense of civility, secularism shows its more progressive side, and law and civility is a sort of secular religion—in the sense of […]
Posted in Essays and Papers, Spirituality and Philosophy | 3 Comments
Improvisation and the Burden of Shame
Hypothesis: A key element in improvisation is the willingness—even a bit of an expectation—to make mistakes, with a fair degree of confidence that when these mistakes are made, they can be coped with in a number of ways: – joked about, with gentle, self-forgiving, self-deprecating humor exaggerated pride, consciously denied (“well, that was just what […]
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Promoting “Psychological Literacy”
In some ways, I’m actually a little behind—technologically—and more than a bit out of it—because I don’t have a television set, don’t see many movies, don’t know or care about several major sectors of popular culture (e.g., movies, sports, celebrities, television shows)! But also I realized today that in a few ways I am perhaps […]
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