{"id":2733,"date":"2018-01-12T21:54:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-13T05:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=2733"},"modified":"2018-01-12T21:54:51","modified_gmt":"2018-01-13T05:54:51","slug":"the-social-atom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=2733","title":{"rendered":"The Social Atom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the risk of offending some people, I will start out by saying there is no such <strong><em>thing<\/em><\/strong> as a \u201csocial atom.\u201d It\u2019s a construct, an idea made up by Jacob L. Moreno. It has its uses. But also it\u2019s what the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called, \u201cThe fallacy of misplaced concreteness.\u201d&#160; Name something and it gives the impression it\u2019s real\u2014more or less. But in fact the metaphor is misleading You don\u2019t have a social atom, nor do I\u2014it\u2019s a way of talking about our social \u201cembeddedness.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In Moreno\u2019s way of speaking, one has a different \u201csocial atom\u201d for each involvement, each role.&#160; Phil Carter in New Zealand writes, \u201cIf we really get with the protagonist, and not relate to any theory whatsoever, I reckon the chances of discovering what this person\u2019s&#160; &#8216;social atom&#8217; are increased. The social atom having become agglutinated as the social self schema in the brain &#8211; thereby being internal-ly and externally existing.\u201d&#160; I agree, but note that this concept really shifts as the person\u2019s own point of view, his or her attention, purpose, etc. So the social atom is subjective, not objective. It\u2019s still a useful tool, with that warning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the risk of offending some people, I will start out by saying there is no such thing as a \u201csocial atom.\u201d It\u2019s a construct, an idea made up by Jacob L. Moreno. It has its uses. But also it\u2019s what the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called, \u201cThe fallacy of misplaced concreteness.\u201d&#160; Name something and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,12,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychodrama","category-psychotherapy","category-social-depth-psychology-sociometry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2733"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2733"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2734,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2733\/revisions\/2734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}