“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

CHAPTER
SIX:

Seth Meets a Psychologist

In spring 1965, about a year after we wrote Dr. Osis, Rob wrote to Dr. Instream (not his real name), who was connected with a state university in upstate New York. Dr. Instream had been one of the nation’s foremost psychologists in his earlier years, and had investigated many mediums in the past. If Seth was a secondary personality he would know it, I thought. Again we enclosed a few sessions with one letter. Dr. Instream wrote back, expressing interest and inviting us to attend the National Hypnosis Symposium to be held in July 1965.

It was the craziest and most vexing vacation we’ve ever spent. At the first lecture we attended, the speaker gave a demonstration in hypnosis. Except for ourselves and a few students, the symposium was attended by psychologists, doctors, and dentists. The lecturer was a psychologist who is well known for his work in hypnosis. Lowering his voice, he said that since most of those in the audience used hypnosis professionally, they should know what it felt like to be hypnotized themselves. So he began.

Dr. Instream treated Seth with deference, great deference—and I admit that I found this somewhat suspicious at the time. I wasn’t sure myself as to who or what Seth was, and the thought crossed my mind more than once that the doctor’s attitude was simply a device to gain my confidence—the psychologist’s pretense that he believed in the existence of his patient’s delusion as unquestioningly as the patient did.

Unfortunately, we also spoke to another psychologist at the symposium, one much closer to my own age. We met during one of the informal get-togethers. When he discovered that we weren’t connected with the medical profession in any way, he asked what our interest was in the symposium. So we told him. One thing led to another. A discussion about Seth followed, and Rob showed him some of our notes, later, in our room.

After speaking to us for less than an hour, the psychologist assured me that I was schizoid, using the sessions to dominate Rob. Once, he grabbed the notes from the bureau and approached me like some wrathful god, waving them in my face. “You think it’s necessary to take all these records, don’t you?” he demanded.

This happened between our first and second interviews with Dr. Instream. In the meantime we drove around the deserted college town, and stopped once for a drink in a hot little bar. Never had I been so filled with self-doubts. The psychologist had spoken aloud the most exaggerated of my own inner fears.

Dr. Instream told us that the psychologist’s behavior was an example of the sort of performance that so upset parapsychologists. But more, he told me once again that he’d found no such tendencies on my part. “The man’s had no experience in the practice of psychology,” he said. “He’s only read textbook cases of this or that.” Then he told us that while the experience was unfortunate, perhaps it was best that we encountered it early in the game. Academic psychologists were apt to take a dim view of mediumship, he said. I would have to let such comments roll off my back. I should have laughed at the young psychologist. I should have said, “Well, it takes one to know one,” or some such.