“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Earlier today, feeling somewhat tense, Jane had visited a chiropractor for treatment. While talking with him she mentioned a hard lump that had appeared recently on the inside of her left wrist. It bothered her but little; the doctor stated that it could be an arthritic nodule; seeing that this upset her greatly, he reassured her by saying that it was more likely to be the result of an injury. Not remembering any injurious incidents, Jane came home quite upset.

(She was still upset as session time approached, and had been unable to take her nap before the session. She wrote out a list of half a dozen questions concerning the nodule, and left it lying on the table as session time came. She began on time, again without her glasses, and at a normal speed with some pauses. Her voice was normal, her pacing regular.)

(Break at 9:29. Jane was dissociated as usual, but more toward the middle and end of the delivery than in the beginning. Seth had not yet mentioned the nodule on her wrist, and we agreed that he was probably waiting until she attained a deeper state before he dealt with personal material of this sort.

The hand was not injured, that is not knocked as by bunking, but was irritated due to a change of wrist motion occurring when he began to use a second typewriter, which he had not used for many years. The keys are spaced differently. The automatic wrist motion that he regularly uses in his touch typing was knocked askew, the pattern broken, and he used an erratic pressure that induced strain. This caused the irritation and the subsequent nodule.

I would state furthermore that indeed Ruburt did have occasion to be angry at the chiropractor, since with an emotional fear unthinking suggestions such as his, made with only the flimsiest of evidence, can be most harmful and destructive. And in an unwary, emotionally upset personality, particularly if under stress, such a suggestion could cause a harmless and protective nodule to be changed by the strong powers of adverse expectation, or rather expectation poorly used, into the form of what is feared; as a slight but harmless irregularity of heartbeat, with the unthinking suggestion of a doctor, can become through the patient’s fears an actual functional disorder, so could suggestion turn a relatively harmless formation like Ruburt’s into an arthritic condition.

Nevertheless, because the patient is in a condition where he is most susceptible to suggestions, a great responsibility lies upon the shoulders of those who would treat illness. The chiropractor’s suggestion that the irritation was an arthritic one was made positively; that is, without thinking he stated “Oh yes, that is not normal at all, it is an arthritic nodule.” Later, realizing that the suggestion had been a poor one, and moreover one of which he was not certain, he amended the statement, adding that such a formation could also be the result of injury or simple irritation to the joint.