“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now give us a moment. There is something in particular that frightened him, and he does not know how to put it into words. He is frightened of an older man. This, I presume, to be the grandfather.

And not of the man himself, but of a difference between the man and yourself. A difference in the behavior of two personalities that he holds dear. Now give us a moment here. He has been identifying with you as his male image. There are some adjacent personalities about your home which also serve as semi-images in this respect. When he is away from you, however, in his particular case, any characteristics that are not yours that he sees in his grandfather somehow become threatening. He wants to identify with both of you. He wants to think of you in some manner as one. Any individual differences between the two of you upset him. When the two of you are together, you and grandfather, there is no difficulty because the boy, in his own mind, interweaves these characteristics. When he is alone, however, with the older man, any characteristic of his that does not agree with yours becomes threatening to him.

I am speaking of the past. Now he cannot stand to feel loyalty divided. He must feel his complete loyalty to you or to another. He cannot seem to divide the two. When he is with you, his loyalty is yours. When he is with the grandfather, however, he relates to those characteristics that are like yours. Any characteristics that are different upset him and frighten him. They confuse his sense of loyalty and he feels that he is supposed to relate to the grandfather as a male image when he is away from you. He feels that this will hurt you, but more than this, it makes him feel insecure. We will try to go deeper into it for you. The hesitation, however, is translated into the speech mechanism.

([Alison.:] “This occurs a lot when Joel is at work, and I’m with him.”)

This has to do, again, with the confusion, in his particular case, of loyalties. He has the feeling, I will not say he has been given the feeling, but he has it, that his father demands a strong emotional attachment on his part and deep loyalty, and he relates strongly to him for this reason, but when the father is absent then he experiences hesitation.

Now there is some sense of jealousy in the family over the child that the child senses and this, also, has to do with his sense of hesitation in speech. I will try to give you more specific information. Do you follow me thus far? The child is presently caught in a dilemma of divided loyalties. You should particularly make sure that you allow him psychic freedom and not emotionally bind him.