Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
The Resonance of the “Wow!”
The title of this post is a bit of paradoxical apophatic musing. Apophatic refers to the stance that we—human consciousness—cannot begin to begin to know Divine essence. A degree of surrender is needed. Yet we can in our foolish innocence speculate. So also a three-year-old can talk about “my mommy” and know deeply that of […]
Posted in Essays and Papers, Psychological Literacy, Spirituality and Philosophy | No Comments
Making Meta-Cognition Explicit
One of the trends in the last century—still not apparent to most people, though—is the increasing interest in how we think. It’s an extension of the interest not in the content but the spirit of psychoanalysis. In other words, let’s wonder about the possibility that what is true in astronomy and microbiology is also true […]
Posted in Essays and Papers, Follies, Spirituality and Philosophy, Wisdom-ing | 1 Comment
Action Explorations: The Field
This field involves improvisation, enactment, insight, and collaborative creativity. Insight involves bringing that which is hardly admitted even to oneself into explicit expression in the group. It helps people be more conscious, to include more within their critical capacity. In turn, that allows people to update old and obsolete attitudes, immature thought patterns, habitual reactions, […]
Posted in Action Explorations, Uncategorized | No Comments
Action Explorations or Psychodrama as Research
Although “research” tends to be associated with a more restrictive process—attempting to control many variables in order to see if varying one makes a difference—this approach applies more to only certain kinds of research—kinds that tend to be associated with things, material objects, chemistry, physics, biology. But if we recognize the word is more a […]
Posted in Action Explorations, Psychodrama, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry, Social-Depth Psychology (Sociometry) | No Comments
“Glory Be” Is God
I speculate philosophically and theologically with certain friends, so when my pal Anthony Skrovan asked at lunch, “So what do you think was going on before the Big Bang?”, it was fun to dare to imagine an answer. Before I share it with you, though, a disclaimer: Of course I don’t know to the tenth […]
Posted in Foolin Around, Play and Spontaneity, Spirituality and Philosophy | No Comments
Process is Our Most Important Product
In the 1950s and ‘60s the General Electric company—abbreviated GE—had as its motto “Progress is our most important product.” It occurred to me in contemplating the difference between improvisational theatre and psychodrama that one of the more valuable features of the latter is that in psychodrama the process is made explicit. In theatre there is […]
Posted in Psychodrama, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry | No Comments
We Had It Easy!
First, there’s a funny skit by Monty Python’s Flying Circus where four guys try to out-brag how tough they had it as kids. As a child of parents who lived through the depression, a common complaint we heard our parents make was “You kids have it easy! We had it tough!” School was more demanding, […]
Posted in Autobiographical, Current Events | No Comments
Adam’s Roots
This is a personal reflection on an associated theme as described elsewhere (today) on this blog: One’s psycho-social or soul roots may not be in the past. It’s possible that they can also be identities that partake of current and even future (envisioned) trends. Certainly that’s true for me. I have a few ethnic roots, […]
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Roots, Affiliations, and the Sense of Self
On my website I wrote about how the sense of self is an aggregate illusion, a feeling and complex of images that arise out of a goodly number of sources. Now I’ve realized that equally that our affiliations and identifications overlap with the categories of our roots and our preferred social networks. They are invisible […]
Posted in Psychological Literacy, Psychology, Social-Depth Psychology (Sociometry) | 1 Comment
Getting Sick, Getting Better
In the first few weeks of January I had a cold (not a flu) that still depleted my energy and appetite and even after the respiratory symptoms cleared up after about 2 weeks I have felt draggy. But more, I’ve felt that everything seems too much, a bit overwhelming, a steep hill. There’s been a […]
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