30. Untransmuted and Transmuted Contact Rebuses

Untransmuted Contact Rebus

It appears then, that parents have a relatively unmodified contact rebus, the function of which is to first and foremost provide maximum life force. By not modifying the contact rebus, parents do not need to expend energy on such a modification. Lifeforce can be tapped at its source, i.e. from the parents’ positive core. Energy is also saved because the teenager does not need to expend his own life force in interpreting the contact rebus.

So in this type of situation, the person in love or the teenager employs another form of contact rebus. Although the term is an approximation, we can for the sake of simplicity call this category of contact rebus the untransmuted contact rebus. Here the aim of the contact rebus is to provide life energy. The fact that it is untransmuted is an approximation because a contact rebus always involves some transmutation; for example, parents always have certain personal emotional needs (Motivational Work, Part 1: Values and Theory, pages 184 – 190).

During the teenager’s adolescence, parents, as well as their teenager, experience change. The family’s life situation may have altered, resulting in new personal needs affecting the parents’ relationship with their teenager. For this reason, parents are constantly faced with situations where their resolve to maintain an untransmuted contact rebus is challenged, as they must prevent their personal needs from infringing on their parental contact rebus as far as possible.

Transmuted Contact Rebus

The transmuted contact rebus appears to be more useful when an individual is in need of a great deal of life force, such as a teenager. When the parents’ untransmuted contact rebus provides a response to the transmuted contact rebus of the teenager, the latter can derive more life force than if he had himself employed an untransmuted one. The parents’ life force takes on greater value if it addresses a teenager’s contact rebus for which effort is required on the part of the parents in order to reciprocate with an untransmuted contact rebus.

In the case of a person in love, the transmuted contact rebus partly fills another function. Here it is important to receive life force from the partner whilst giving back as much as possible. Like the teenage contact rebus, the aim of the romantic contact rebus is to elicit a strong response from the target. However, the desired effect of reciprocity is to build a close, intense and egalitarian relationship and not to one-sidedly rake in as much life force as possible.

Neither is this feasible, as the person in love will receive a different transmuted contact rebus in response. For this reason, teenagers have a greater opportunity to receive life force through a transmuted contact rebus than a person in love. The parent-teenager relationship is already in place and they will receive a response in the form of an untransmuted contact rebus.

In a romantic situation, the partners must first build up a relationship with one another through transmuted contact rebuses that may afterward be replaced by more untransmuted ones. Only then can the person in love receive the same amount of energy as the teenager. However, unlike the latter, there is an interchange of life force through the untransmuted contact rebus.

The transmuted contact rebus is focused on elicitation whilst the untransmuted contact rebus is focused on communication. In this way, transmuted and untransmuted contact rebus are two different strategies for relating to other people, both creating relationships, but in different ways.