“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The child took all this as the punishment for violence. The mother now could no longer be violent in act. Not only that, but she was helpless to resist violence. This made the child hold back the most natural of aggressive feelings. In most cases the child can slap the parent. It may be slapped back, but it knows the slap will not really kill the parent. It is pretend.

In this case the child did not dare slap the parent, for even the slightest move upon the mother’s bed, the slightest most unintentional motion, made the mother cry out in pain. Not only unintentional violence then of the simplest kind, had to be avoided, but the unintentional motion and the thoughtless childish move. This was aggravated because when the mother became frightened she pleaded with the child to sleep with her.

That he finally defended himself against her, defended himself against her emotionally and psychically, is all the more astounding. The main reason that he does not see her is not because he fears her, but because he fears the violence in himself that he has never dared direct toward her.

She did express this violence, and again with fury, through verbal attacks to which Ruburt was extremely sensitive. But Ruburt did not even dare to express his violence verbally, because of the parent-child relationship. Added to this was the fact that the child loved the parent much more strongly, you see, than the parent ever loved the child.

Ruburt knew this well. He has since grown to like all animals but at the moment of the attack, you see, the cat instantly became this personification of evil to him, and again his primary concern was to flee. There was never an instant in the whole affair when he thought of striking back.

When he was not docile as a child there was vicious instant retaliation of a most complicated nature. There was ordinary retaliation, in that he was punished through word attacks, and through such corporal punishment as the invalid could give. But, and here Joseph we come to the real heart of the matter, the mother retaliated in the main not by a direct attack upon the child, but by causing the child to believe that its misbehavior could be, and very nearly was, going to result in the death of the mother. As any child does, the child at times wished for the parent’s death, and here we see the mother acting out her own death in order to punish the child.

The child therefore until its teens dared not be anything but docile. The personality was a strong one however, and the rebellion found no outlet except for creativity. Now the present personality suffers pangs of remorse over the slightest imagined wrong it may do to another.

When this builds up and enough small legitimate injustices are borne, docilely, then we have an explosion of a sorts. Everyone else you see has a right to gripe, he feels subconsciously, but he cannot. He is terrified to do so. When he manages to do so he is jubilant out of all proportion. His swearing you see allows him leeway.

(Break at 10:10. Jane was again very well dissociated. She said she could feel herself begin to protest when Seth got to the part concerning her mother’s pretending of death, but Seth led her over the rough spots well.

You grew up in an environment, my dear friend, in which violence and aggressiveness became one, were expressed in some degree by both parents. But this expression was denied to the children, and you longed to retaliate. Your father’s aggressiveness, normal male aggressiveness, was blocked up, and directed against your mother. You longed to express your natural violence, you normal aggressiveness, and you also feared to do so, and dwelled mainly in your own world.

All of this needs to be said, you see. You are both learning at a rather amazing rate. In the past you turned some repressed violence inward against yourself. Ruburt’s selling jobs were very practical for a time, for they allowed him to release aggressive feelings. You become angry when you think, rightly, that Ruburt is too docile in his dealings, but this is because you are angry at your own lack of power as a child to retaliate against the atmosphere of violence that you sensed in the child’s home.

Subconsciously he feels that you are saying shut up, and this angers, humiliates and bewilders him. He struggles against such disclosures to begin with. Instead you see methods can be used to direct the emotions in other channels. You can get him to talk about other matters by asking for example about what he has written for the day. The subject chosen by you must be one in which he is immensely interested however. He will understand that you are merely trying to redirect him, and will not feel that you are restraining his freedom to say what he wants to say. He will understand what you are doing, but that is all right. He knows the emotional situation with your mother, and will not object.

There will be foreign sales, not counting the Canada printing. There will be pocketbooks. All of this is not in a snap (Jane snapped her fingers) but it is not in any distant future, either.

There is a man who wears a hat in his office who will be connected with one of these books. It is a characteristic of his. He is perhaps 46, but he is definitely between 46 and 56. (Pause.) There is a G  connected with him.