“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The mother also provides the same kind of information to a male offspring. The father contributes his share in each case. Over the generations, then, certain characteristics appear to be quite naturally male or female, and these will vary to some extent according to the civilizations and world conditions. Each individual is highly unique, however, so these models for behavior will vary. They can indeed be changed in a generation, for the experience of each person alters the original information. This provides leeway that is important.

Now: In some historical periods it was desirable in practical terms that a man have many wives, so that if he died in battle his seed might be planted in many wombs — particularly in times when diseases struck men and women down often in young adulthood.

The boy does not seek, naturally, to “dethrone” the father. He seeks to emulate him; he seeks to be himself as fully as it seems to him that his father was himself. He hopes to go beyond himself and his own capabilities for himself and for his father.

As a child he once thought that his father was immortal, in human terms — that he could do no wrong. The son tries to vindicate the father by doing no wrong himself, and perhaps by succeeding where it seems the father might have failed. It is much more natural for the male to try to vindicate the father than it is to destroy him, or envy him in negative terms.

To the male child, the penis is something that belongs to him personally in the same way that an arm or leg does, or that his mouth or anus does. He does not consider it a weapon (humorously). He is not jealous of his father’s love for the mother, for he understands quite well that her love for him is just as strong. He does not wish to possess his mother sexually in the way that adults currently suppose. He does not understand those terms. He may at times be jealous of her attention, but this is not a sexual jealousy in conventionally understood terms. Your beliefs blind you to the sexual nature of children. They do enjoy their bodies. They are sexually aroused. The psychological connotations, however, are not those assigned to them by adults.

The beliefs involving the son’s inherent rivalry with the father, and his need to overthrow him, follow instead patterns of culture and tradition, economic and social, rather than biological or psychological. Those ideas serve as handy explanations for behavior that is not inherent or biologically pertinent.