“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In the initial stages of Ruburt’s withdrawals, the exaggerated chatter also served to fool him, you see, as well as others. He would become all the more animated. He recognized some of these characteristics in your Jesuit friend. (Bill Gallagher.) They frightened him and were at least somewhat responsible in helping shake him loose. (Last week.) Do you follow me?

Your discussion this evening, and events since our session have been to the point, and beneficial. Particularly your comments concerning Ruburt’s behavior with the first husband. When the two of you have had any personal difficulties then Ruburt became twice as angry and fearful about your parents. At one time he equated you with Walt in his dreams. The dreams were meant to show him he was repeating a pattern of behavior.

He is terrified of vulnerability because of his mother’s condition when he was a child. Many of his early poems clearly showed a desire to dissociate himself from the warm spontaneous self, and to hide in a nonfeeling uncaring safety. He envied you what he thought of as your coolness, and in trying to emulate it at times he only used it as an excuse to continue this old pattern of withdrawal.

He could not handle his mother’s fear. As a child it terrified him and made him feel inadequate. He dared not feel it as deeply as he actually did; therefore fears in himself were also not to be faced. He was ashamed to look to anyone for help. He is afraid to ask for help because he was ashamed that his mother had to ask him, a child, for help, and often he hated her for doing so.

Ruburt’s deep love for you shocked him out of that pattern for some time, but he also idealized you to such an extent that some difficulties were bound to arise. Behind any ordinary disagreement you might voice, any normal protest, he felt there was a great charge. He was so afraid to voice protest himself that he felt you must be driven by great inner forces before you would dare voice any protest to him.

He therefore drastically overemphasized your attitudes and moods during your illness. The feeling that you did not need him began to grow out of normal bounds in Florida. Lately the apartment seemed frightening to him because he felt like a rat in a maze, reacting to the same stimuli in the same way, without knowing the reason and without the introduction of any change.

The apathy was caused when he simply decided to bring things to an end. Stopping the normal activities he had to some extent insisted upon allowed him to become aware to some degree of the subjective feelings that had been beneath all of his activities. He was face to face with them and with the natural end product if they were continued.

He thought you discouraged deep conversation unless there was some crisis that brought about a confrontation. He could not admit his fears to himself nor share them with you. He completely lacks the ability to discuss normal fears and worries in any kind of neighborhood contact—with girl friends. The fears finally became so charged that all normal discussion was out of the question. He used ideas of positive thinking to squash the fears down more securely. Their charge was so strong that he felt you were as frightened of them as he was, and therefore to discuss them would threaten you also.

He greatly exaggerated their power, you see, in that regard. He then projected many of these attitudes upon you. If he accused himself then he would see accusation in your remarks or attitudes toward him.

He could not give himself well in your personal intimate relations because it was with you most of all that he had to watch his expression. The fears had to be kept away from you or the game was up. He could not afford then to let go. He thinks fears are an admission of helplessness, that you always wanted someone who was free and independent, and that you would have no use for anyone in that position.

Now. Geographically he feels between his mother and yours, and has always been somewhat uneasy over living in this state. (New York.)

He felt you were ashamed of his background and did not want him to discuss it. (Pause.) Give us time. (Pause.) When he goes to see your father he feels guilty because he is not seeing his mother, who is also in a home. He feels that your mother is gloating, having gotten rid of the father, and he is afraid of your family home for fear it might trap you both. He did not want any of your belongings or yours in it.

You understand that the weight problem is also a symptom that will clear up as the fears are released. The fear of dentists has to do with an episode when he was in college, and the dentist came to visit his mother. He has consciously forgotten the details. His mother often said that her condition might have been the result of bad teeth also, and the two are connected in his mind.

Ruburt also has feelings about food, as you know—eating with strangers or with people he does not like. All of these enter in. His mother ate too much, and this is a way of asserting his independence from her. She was very fond of food, and Ruburt now pretends to dismiss it. This did not occur earlier, but only when the fears brought additional charge. He often cast you as the accuser, and therefore felt he could not communicate. You had something to do with this in the past. Later the course was set, and when you withdrew your faulty attitudes, he went on the same course.

He is particularly susceptible along the lines of his work because he felt from childhood that his ability was the only thing that made him lovable at all in his mother’s eyes, and that his entire worth as a human being was dependent upon how he made out as a writer.

It was the only thing that set him apart under welfare conditions, the mark of distinction that got him to college by the skin of his teeth, and it was, he felt, what made you love him. Therefore if you had criticisms about his work, if you did not like it, you would not love him.

The financial matter was added to this when he began to sell books. Not only did his book have to be good, you see, but financially successful since you loved him for his talents mainly, and the two were combined. With the financial elements added, then to retain your love his books must also sell well.

When Rebellers was published your attitude was a poor one, but it was drastically received by our friend, who could not understand it and felt then and there that you no longer loved him as you had. Because he felt you loved him for his talent alone, then his books became also gifts to you beside their meaning for himself. But not only gifts as much as reassurances, you see. “I still have my talent. I am using it, so you can love me.”

Any difficulty with a book then meant he could lose your love.

All of this has been unconscious on his part. He has not been that aware of it. He felt then that he had no one to turn to or to help him. He was also afraid that his fears about physical reality now and in the future were so drastic that you would also be terrified, and that together you could not solve the problems. He was terrified of doing anything that might make you ill, and determined to bear any worries or problems alone.

He keeps minute by minute count of you when you are working—all unaware, yet he makes it a point not to ask you about your painting a good deal of the time. To show concern you see to his way of thinking would be to admit, even briefly, he has any fears at all regarding your work. The charge had so built up that if you had one bad afternoon painting, he saw this as a sign of complete failure on your part; and he did the same with his own work.

The physical effects in Saratoga at your last trip (summer 1970) were caused by guilt, Ruburt feeling that he was so close and would not visit his mother. Now take your break. One point: These attitudes and feelings must not remain simply a part of a session. They must be discussed by both of you with emotional interplay allowed for, emotional release.

We are going to end the session shortly. He feared he was going beyond your reach, and he could have in a very real manner. This idea alone terrified him. He feared that on your own you would not make the effort to pull him back, and yet he would not ask you to do so. To show that he still has some reachable foibles, you still aroused a spark of his old enthusiasm earlier this evening when you suggested that his place (our apartment) still did have possibilities if your eyes were opened to them. So pursue that.