“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

This could happen as a result of the smallest transgression, if the mother was in a particularly unstable condition. When the death was not acted out in drama form—this you are familiar with, we shall not go into it here—then instead the mother pretended to have an attack of one kind or another, and she told the child that the child was directly responsible.

Now these emotional confessions of Ruburt’s annoy you considerably. They are not necessary. However your annoyance can be tempered with somewhat more understanding, and this in itself will tend to minimize their occurrence. When he indulges in this sort of thing he is feeling rebellious, you see, and this is a result of the built-up aggressive feelings of which I have been speaking.