Adam Blatner, M.D.:

Biographical Information
(Revised,  November 12, 2007)

Adam was born in 1937 in Los Angeles, where he grew up. In 1955, he began at the University of California in Berkeley for his undergraduate studies. Adam was awarded Phi Beta Kappa in his third year there, and then graduated with honors in a special field of cultural aspects of religion. He attended medical school at the University of California San Francisco campus, graduating in 1963. After internship in Los Angeles, he took a psychiatric residency at the Stanford University Medical Center. While there he became interested in psychodrama. This was then followed by a post-residency fellowship training in child and family psychiatry back in Los Angeles, and then he served in the U.S. Air Forces as a child and adult psychiatrist at a base in England. In 1972, he began a private practice near Palo Alto, California. In 1979 he moved to Santa Rosa, CA, where he and his second wife Allee developed The Art of Play. In 1983 they moved to Texas where they could help Allee's aging parents. From 1987-1994 Adam was on the faculty of the University of Louisville School of Medicine's Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Science in Kentucky, where he became an Assistant Professor. He's also worked in many other clinical settings, including hospitals, clinics, and private practice. Around 2001, Adam retired from practice, but has remained very active professionally. He continues to teach classes, present at conferences, write papers for journals and chapters for books, serves as consulting editor for three journals and executive editor for another, and so forth. (Here's a link to a listing of his publications.)

Regarding Dr. Blatner's books: Adam wrote an introductory text on psychodrama, titled Acting-In, first published in 1973. (It has become one of the better-known texts because of its relative clarity, translated into several languages.) A decade later, he wrote an intellectual companion to Acting In, titled Foundations of Psychodrama, which delved more deeply into history, theory, and practice. Around that time (1988), he and his wife, Allee, also had published their book, The Art of Play: Helping adults reclaim imagination and spontaneity. These books have been revised several times and translated into numerous languages.) Adam continues to write chapters and articles on applied philosophy, psychology, psychodrama and other topics. (He has also made many presentations to various professional groups and conferences.) Many have been posted on this website, so browse around. In early 2007 he had published an anthology, Interactive and Improvisational Drama: Varieties of Applied Theatre and Performance. 

At present, Adam and Allee are living in an active retirement community in Georgetown, in central Texas (one of the Del Webb/Pulty Homes Sun City projects) about 35 miles north of the State Capitol in Austin. They bike, walk, square dance, sing in the Sun City Singers, participate in the theatre club, visit family, and are in other ways active in the community. Adam also goes folk dancing down in Austin, has organized and held song fests and helped found a local lifelong learning program (Senior University Georgetown). He continues to teach classes for this group on various topics, such as "psychological literacy," the lore and history of writing, aspects of philosophy, the history of medicine, and other subjects. He has also been serving as one of the executive editors of  ReVision: A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation.

His major goals include:

  • Getting practical knowledge about psychology into the general population
  • Helping to get the teaching of these themes, including communications, problem solving, and self-awareness, and other "people skills" in the secondary schools if not earlier.
  • Integrating spirituality and the best insights of psychodynamic psychology
  • Fostering activities that involve spontaneity, improvisation, celebration
  • Encouraging singing together
  • Applying the rich repertoire of psychodramatic techniques and principles to the teaching of psychological skills in schools and other settings, and also to a more empathic and involved understanding of relevant issues of history and current events.
  • Encouraging people to use psychodrama, sociodrama, sociometry, and other experiential approaches in psychotherapy, education, spiritual development, community building, and other settings.
  • Promoting activities related to consciousness transformation, and helping people to deepen their sense of meaning in life.
    • Now, the above is closer to my formal resumé, but in many respects, as detailed as it may be, it’s really quite superficial and increasingly irrelevant to what is involved in knowing the “real me.” In many ways, I live more fully at an imaginal level, through the back-stories of my cartoons, parables, made-up myths, philosophical and aesthetic ramblings, and the resonances of my interests in playful as well as serious topics. For more about Adam ManyParts, click here.  Or click here for my "cartoon biography."
       Also, click here for the link to further autobiographical notes.
       Here's another biographical supplement done as a feature for a local newspaper.

    You may write to him at his postal address:

    Adam Blatner, M.D.
    103 Crystal Springs Drive
    Georgetown, TX 78628-4502

    Or email at adam@blatner.com

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