“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

What you are dealing with in many instances are exhibitions of various, sometimes quite diverse personality patterns of behavior—patterns that are, however, not as assimilated, or as smoothly operative as they are in the person you call normal. The patterns are seen in an exaggerated fashion, so that in some such cases at least you can gain glimpses of mental, emotional, and psychic processes that usually remain psychologically invisible beneath the more polished or “finished” social personality of the usual individual.

The person labeled schizophrenic, momentarily or for varying periods of time, lacks a certain kind of psychological veneer. This is not so much a basic lack of psychological finish as it is the adoption of a certain kind of (pause) psychological camouflage.

The communications themselves are often a kind of psychological or symbolic code, such as might indeed be used in military intelligence. If the messages were to be clearly deciphered and understood, then of course the game would be over, for the one to understand the message would be the united self who [had] felt the need of such camouflaged self-troops (hyphen) to begin with.

I am making generalizations here, but each individual case should be looked at in its own light. Such people as a rule, however, have an exaggerated version of the self (pause), so idealized (long pause) that its very existence intimidates practical action. They are afraid of making mistakes, terrified of betraying this sensed inner psychological superior. Usually, such an idealized inner self comes from the acceptance of highly distorted beliefs—again, concerning good and evil. You end up with what can amount to two main inner antagonists: a superior self and a debased self. The qualities considered good are attracted to the superior self as if it were a magnet. The qualities that seem bad (underlined) are in the same fashion attracted to the debased self. Both of them, relatively isolated psychological polarities, hold about equal sway. All other psychological evidences that are ambiguous, or not clearly understood by either side, group together under their own psychological banners. This is a kind of circular rather than linear arrangement, however, psychologically speaking.

He requires undue amounts of praise and attention from others, since he obviously will get little from himself. In a fashion, to an extent he will refuse to be accountable for his actions—therefore taking them out of the frame of judgment within which other people must operate. He then can avoid putting his “talents and superior abilities” to the test, where he feels he would certainly fail. He half realizes that the superior self and the debased self are both of psychological manufacture. His abilities are not really that grand. His failures are not nearly that disastrous. The belief in these highly contrasting elements of personality keep him in a state of turmoil, however, so that he feels powerless to act in any concerted fashion.

The term “schizophrenia,” however, covers multitudinous experiences—some such people are quite satisfied with their condition, find their own niches, are able to support themselves, or have means of support. Others live in an atmosphere of constant fear of their own condition, while at the same time they are excited, as soldiers might be in combat. Some can be quite functional in society, and the condition in any case is highly variable, covering people who are simply social misfits to those who are in deep psychological trouble.

(10:03.) With most people (long pause), there is a kind of psychological paved road upon which impulses travel before they meet (pause) an intersection with the conscious mind, which then determines whether or not the impulse will be followed or acted upon. (Long pause.) In the kinds of cases we are discussing, however, instead of a paved road you have a dangerous, rocky field that might be filled with mines ready to explode at any time.

(Long pause at 10:24.) Physical perception gives you a necessary kind of feedback, but it is also based upon learning processes, so that from a young age you learn to put the pieces of the world together in acceptable fashions. In a way, under certain conditions, some schizophrenic situations can give you righter glimpses of inner psychological mobility, a mobility that was focused and directed as you grew through childhood. Schizophrenia represents a kind of learning disability in that particular respect.

(Pause.) I will have more to say about such communications, and the ways in which they can point out the greater psychological mobility that is a more or less natural element in children. When you are a child, you are not held accountable for your actions in the same way that adults are, and schizophrenia often begins around puberty, or young adulthood, when people feel that their youthful promise is expected to bear fruit. If they have been considerably gifted, for example, they are now supposed to show the results of schooling through adult accomplishments. If they are nearly convinced, however, that the self is also dangerous or evil, then they become afraid of using their abilities, and indeed become more frightened of the self—which, again, they then try to conquer by dividing. They feel cut off from value fulfillment. In a fashion they begin to act opaquely in the world, showing a divided face.