Adam Blatner

The Beach, the Waves…

Posted on December 20, 2015 by Adam

A friend sent this, and it was poetic enough that I asked her permission to post it, and she said yes: “In my life, I am standing in the ocean and facing the beach. I love the beach; the rhythmicity of the waves relaxes me. I love the warmth of the sun, the smell […]

Posted in Essays and Papers, Spirituality and Philosophy | No Comments

Tooting Your Own Horn

Posted on December 19, 2015 by Adam

“To think: I did all that…” a fragment from Frank Sinatra’s theme song, My Way. A little of this—maybe 7 – 12%—is good. More begins to become sort of “narcis-sistic.” Less is too deferential. More is tiresome for others; 20% is annoying; and if you toot your own horn at 30% or more you become […]

Posted in Autobiographical, Mind-Spectrums, Psychological Literacy | No Comments

Feeling That I’ve Really Lived

Posted on November 20, 2015 by Adam

If I think about it, I have indeed really lived. Curiously, I don’t often feel this way. Indeed, I have a mild neurotic complex that suggests gently in feeling tones that I haven’t. Thank goodness, it’s very mild: I’m pretty well balanced; but I’m cleaning up mild complexes. It never ends, you know. At times […]

Posted in Autobiographical, Psychology | No Comments

Hyper-Complexity

Posted on November 19, 2015 by Adam

My spirituality continues to evolve. I’m 78½ and some would say I’m too old for continuing evolution, but it’s a promise to younger people that life can get better and better even as in some ways one declines. A colleague and I will be presenting on ways action explorations (i.e., psychodramatic methods) can facilitate spiritual […]

Posted in Autobiographical, Spirituality and Philosophy, Wisdom-ing | No Comments

A “Perfect” Life

Posted on November 18, 2015 by Adam

I’m not claiming that my life was objectively perfect, but subjectively I’ve come to a point of cultivating an attitude of “so this is what it is,” really knowing that I don’t have a clue to what it is, but there is that awakening sensation, that moment of perceived insight: I had to mess up […]

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Vicissitudes of Cultural History

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Adam

Forty years later a culture blossoming may become re-interpreted popularly in ways that are very different from the currents involved at the time of that phenomenon. I was on the outskirts of the hippie revolution in San Francisco in the late 1960s, for example. The other night our group had a hippie-theme square dance, though […]

Posted in Current Events, Essays and Papers, My Favorite Things | No Comments

The Appeal of Psychoanalysis

Posted on November 16, 2015 by Adam

I’ve wondered why Freud became so popular. It was not that he was charming. He could be pleasant but also somewhat opinionated. For one thing, he wrote fairly clearly, compared to his peers. The riddle of why any personage, artist, showman, etc., becomes “popular” is not easily answered. However here are some other factors. Freud […]

Posted in Current Events, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry, Whassup? | No Comments

Hollow Weenies

Posted on October 25, 2015 by Adam

Hollow-weenie -eeeeee is coming! Let’s all pretend to be scared: Eeee! Now let’s all pretend to be scary: Booooo! Unless you’re suffering from PTSD, both are sort-of fun, lifting us out of our humdrum civilized life, jolting us back with a mild energizing thrill into a simulacrum of what it might have been like for […]

Posted in Foolin Around, Play and Spontaneity, World of Almost-Real | No Comments

Hitler Was Not Crazy!

Posted on October 24, 2015 by Adam

Perhaps he was a little towards the end, when I think he was known to abuse amphetamines to stay awake to cope with the stress of the later stages of the Second World War. But in the early parts, it seems to me that many politicians resort to similar exaggerations or not-easily-disproven lies, and for […]

Posted in Essays and Papers, History, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry | No Comments

Unfolding Consciousness