Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Welcome to my Blog!
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 […]
Posted in Essays and Papers | No Comments
Meaning of Life (Provisional)
An acquaintance heard that I was interested in philosophy and jokingly asked me, “What is the meaning of life?” I didn’t have a ready answer then, but the next morning, in reverie, I found myself thinking, “You know the answer.” Surprised—because I didn’t know that I knew—, I asked this inner voice, “Oh? What is […]
Posted in Essays and Papers, Wisdom-ing | 3 Comments
On Living into Middle Age
Dear Son and Daughter, I realized that you’re heading into the middle years and realized also that things had shifted. When I was young, in my teens and 20s, the mainstream culture didn’t view mid-adulthood as a time of important development. While it was recognized that adults sometimes changed, yet it was not a social […]
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Aggregate Experiences
Although there are words for meaning, self, society, family, happiness, and other experiences, we should recognize that these are states of mind are not a single phenomena, but rather they are the product of many— possibly hundreds—of component experiences of a variety of types. There is no “thing-ness” to such phenomena, but rather they should be […]
Posted in Psychological Literacy, Psychology | 1 Comment
Folk Dancing as Soul Celebration
One of my goals is to encourage people to re-own their participation in the arts, in drama, singing, the visual arts, poetry, various kinds of dancing and movement, all in a spirit of play. These are powerful vehicles for vitality and authentic self-expression. Ballroom dancing (learning cool steps!), square dancing (also called “friendship put to […]
Posted in Autobiographical, My Favorite Things, Play and Spontaneity | No Comments
Some of Adam Blatner’s “ManyParts” Characters
Based on the introductory webpage: Snidely Whiplash, the prototypical villain of the melodrama. Nyah-ha-ha. Actually stimulated not only by melodramas, but also the puppet character of Dishonest John on the Time for Beany children’s television show in Los Angeles around 1948, Snidely represents the delicious contrary roles of wickedness, nastiness, and the spirit of The Grinch […]
Posted in Art (Mandalas, Doodles, Scripts), Autobiographical | No Comments
The Art of Case Formulation
This article is a complement to and/or extension of another paper on this website: The Art of Case Presentation. Other relevant articles include: The Real Diagnostic Categories, Diagnosis in Psychiatry, Factors in Human Development , and others. What’s wrong with the patient? What really is the problem? A term like “depression” rarely explains much. Offering a diagnostic label is […]
Posted in Psychology, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry | 1 Comment
Being Nice: It’s Not So Easy
The stresses of the Christmas Holidays are mixed and manifold, and the temptation occurs to get edgy, irritable, bossy, unkind, or grumpy. Such temptations must be resisted. The following is a depth psychology analysis of the problem: Unless attention is brought to the moment, it is easy to slide into a partially unconscious reactive mode […]
Posted in Psychological Literacy, Social-Depth Psychology (Sociometry) | No Comments
The University of Yourself: A Curriculum for Integrative Learning
There are many, many kinds of learning that have to do with self-development, and that aren’t taught in most schools or colleges. Imagine you could take a major in a four-year college, one that emphasized the development of the human potential instead of the “liberal arts.” Now modify this idea so that it would be […]
Posted in Essays and Papers, Wisdom-ing | No Comments
Learning to Use Anger Constructively
Anger is a natural emotion and signals a need for a change in the environment. However, it is possible and usually desirable to express anger in modulated forms, and learning to do this is the hallmark of maturity. Role playing is an excellent way to learn this skill, because each level of anger involves a […]
Posted in Psychological Literacy | No Comments