The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind pdf

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5.0 out of 5 stars "The most important theorizing since The Origin of Species..."
Reviewed in the United States on November 11, 2020

The title of my review is a quote from author and NPR radio host Don Wooten, and I think he is correct. The psychologist and author James E. Morriss wrote that Jaynes's theory "… could alter our view of consciousness, revise our conception of the history of mankind, and lay bare the human dilemma in all its existential wonder."Jaynes was far ahead of his time, and his theory remains as relevant and influential today as when it was first published. Many consider Jaynes's book to be one of the most important of the twentieth century.Since the publisher has only included one editorial review, I will add additional reviews below. But first, a word about some of the negative or critical reviews of Jaynes's book. I encourage you to view these with skepticism, as most reflect a very poor understanding of Jaynes's theory, and can easily be dismissed. Jaynes's book is not difficult to understand, but nonetheless many seem to only skim the book or for other reasons fail to grasp his ideas.The most common pitfall in understanding Jaynes's theory is misunderstanding how Jaynes defines consciousness. Jaynes defines consciousness in a very precise way (and he explains why this is so important), and confusing his definition for more broad, vague definitions of consciousness will lead to failure to understand the theory as a whole.The internet, social media, and other factors have ushered in somewhat of an epidemic of lack of humility, where many seem to feel they are qualified to weigh in on nearly everything, regardless of their background or experience with the subject matter. They are quick to offer their opinion on nearly anything, regardless of whether or not they actually know what they are talking about. Amazon also encourages this, by soliciting customer reviews. In the case of the purchase of a garden hose, a set of shelves, other household basics, and many other everyday products, this often makes sense. But for books such as Julian Jaynes's, the average person's opinion may not be all that useful, if not counterproductive.In 2016, Julian Jaynes's theory was discussed in HBO's hit series "Westworld," potentially exposing nearly a million new people to the theory. While it is wonderful that so many new people were turned on to Jaynes's fascinating ideas, it's safe to say that many of these new readers (along with many others) have little if any background with the subject matter. Just as you wouldn't trust your accountant to repair your plumbing, or your eye doctor to handle your legal affairs, so too you should be highly skeptical of the ability of Amazon reviewers with no background in the subject matter to have a sufficient enough understanding of Jaynes's theory after perhaps skimming it once to properly evaluate and review it.Jaynes's theory provides a fascinating reexamination of the psychology of our ancient past and also has far-reaching modern-day implications. Read it for yourself, and make up your own mind. Regardless of whether or not they agree with Jaynes on every point, many feel that Jaynes's book is one of the best books they have ever read -- including people like David Bowie, who included it on his list of favorite books.Since the publication of Jaynes's book, Jaynes's neurological model for the bicameral mind has been confirmed by modern brain imaging studies, his theory inspired the modern interest in hearing voices among normal people (and helped inspire the founding of the worldwide "Hearing Voices Network"), children's imaginary companions have been found to often involve actual hallucinations, his theory helped re-ignite scholarly interest in the role of language in consciousness, vestiges of the bicameral mind have been documented in many pre-literate societies, the transition from bicamerality to consciousness has been documented in other cultures (such as China and Tibet), and much more.** For more information on Julian Jaynes's theory, including new evidence that supports the theory that's been discovered since it was first published, please visit the Julian Jaynes Society at julianjaynes.org. Also be sure to take a look at our follow up books on Julian Jaynes's theory: "Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind," "Gods, Voices, and the Bicameral Mind," "The Julian Jaynes Collection," "Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness," and "The Minds of the Bible." **The following is a small sampling of comments by reviewers whose background and expertise puts them in a better position to offer an informed opinion on Jaynes's theory:“[Jaynes’s] basic hypothesis is probably right.” And “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is one of those ... books … that readers, on finishing it, find that they think about the world quite differently.” — T.M. Luhrmann, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University“[Jaynes] has one of the clearest and most perspicuous defenses of the top-down approach [to consciousness] that I have ever come across.” .... "Something like what he proposes has to be right." — Daniel Dennett, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, Tufts University“The weight of original thought in it is so great that it makes me uneasy for the author’s well-being: the human mind is not built to support such a burden.” — David C. Stove, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, University of Sydney“Julian Jaynes’s theories for the nature of self-awareness, introspection, and consciousness have replaced the assumption of their almost ethereal uniqueness with explanations that could initiate the next change in paradigm for human thought.” — Michael A. Persinger, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience, Laurentian University“Neuroimaging techniques of today have illuminated and confirmed the importance of Jaynes’ hypothesis.”— Robert Olin, M.D., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus in Preventive Medicine, Karolinska Institute“The bold hypothesis of the bicameral mind is an intellectual shock to the reader, but whether or not he ultimately accepts it he is forced to entertain it as a possibility. Even if he marshals arguments against it he has to think about matters he has never thought of before, or, if he has thought of them, he must think about them in contexts and relationships that are strikingly new.” — Ernest R. Hilgard, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Stanford University“Daring and brilliant … well worth reading by any person interested in theories of human learning and behavior, in theory development, and in seeing a scholarly, fertile and original thinker at work.” — Martin Levit, Ph.D., Professor of Education“Some of Jaynes’ original ideas may be the most important of our generation . . . And I feel weak as I try to convey some slight impression of Jaynes’ fantastic vision in this short review. Not since Freud and Jung has anyone had the daring and background to pull together such a far reaching theory.” — Ernest Rossi, Ph.D., Professor of Neuroscience“This book and this man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century. I cannot recommend the book emphatically enough. I have never reviewed a book for which I had more enthusiasm. . . . It renders whole shelves of books obsolete.” — William Harrington, in The Columbus Dispatch“… Scientific interest in [Jaynes’s] work has been re-awakened by the consistent findings of right-sided activation patterns in the brain, as retrieved with the aid of neuroimaging studies in individuals with verbal auditory hallucinations.” — Jan Dirk Blom, M.D, Ph.D.“… [O]ne of the most thought-provoking and debated theories about the origin of the conscious mind.” — Andrea Cavanna, M.D.“… I sympathize with Julian Jaynes’s claim that something of great import may have happened to the human mind during the relatively brief interval of time between the events narrated in the Iliad and those that make up the Odyssey.” — Antonio Damasio, Ph.D., Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology and Neurology, University of Southern California“[Jaynes’s] description of this new consciousness is one of the best I have come across.” − Morris Berman, Ph.D.“He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.” — Raymond Headlee, M.D. in American Journal of Psychiatry“Julian Jaynes is a scholar in the broad original sense of that term. A man of huge creative vitality, Julian Jaynes is my academic man for all seasons.” — Hubert Dolezal, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology“Having just finished The Origin of Consciousness, I myself feel something like Keats’ Cortez staring at the Pacific, or at least like the early reviewers of Darwin or Freud. I’m not quite sure what to make of this new territory; but its expanse lies before me and I am startled by its power.” — Edward Profitt, in Commonweal“… [Jaynes’s] proposal is too interesting to ignore.” — David Eagleman, Ph.D., neuroscientist, Baylor College of Medicine, in Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain“… Read the book and make up your own mind. I can guarantee that you will be enormously interested if not entirely persuaded, as I am myself.” — Charles Van Doren“… [The] more I thought about Jaynes’s thesis, the more reasonable it sounded, and the more I read in anthropology, in history, and above all, in poetry, the more evidence I found to support the idea that hallucinated voices still give socially useful commands.” — Judith Weissman, Ph.D., author and Professor of English, Syracuse University“One’s first inclination is to reject all of it out of hand as science fiction, imaginative speculation with no hard evidence; but, curiously, if one is patient and hears out the story (Jaynes’s style is irresistible) the arguments are not only entertaining but persuasive.” — George Adelman, Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences, MIT, in Library Journal“The most significant book of our time . . .” — D. N. Campbell, in Kappan Magazine“It seems likely that the concept of the ‘bicameral mind’ advanced by Julian Jaynes will prove to be an insight of considerable significance.” — T. Buchan, M.D., Department of Psychiatry, University of Zimbabwe, in Zambezia“A wonderfully intriguing and evocative book…” — J. Harold Ellens, Ph.D., in Understanding Relgious Experience

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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 4, 2014

This is one of those books that I've heard about for years and whose ideas seem to be floating around in the general meme-space of society, but up until now I've never read the original book which sets out these ideas in full. Julian Jaynes was one of the most original thinkers of the 20th century and this book has been called one of the most influential books of the 20th century. I'm not sure I would go that far but Jaynes' theory of consciousness definitely upset the apple cart of psychology at the time.

But unfortunately for Jaynes his theory did not really take over psychology during the last few decades the way he probably hoped it would. The reasons for this are probably many but among them must be the weaknesses in the central theses of the book themselves. I thought at the beginning that I would probably be 90 percent convinced of Jaynes' theory by the end of the book. Unfortunately that didn't happen.

But before we delve into the details let's briefly review the structure of the book. Coming in at 469 pages including the Afterword the book requires a sizable investment of time to wade through. It is divided into three sections: 1.) The Mind of Man, 2.) The Witness of History, and 3.) Vestiges of the Bicameral Mind in the Modern World. But in the Afterword (written in 1990) Jaynes informs us that there are four independent theses in the book: 1.) consciousness is based on language, 2.) the bicameral mind, 3.) the dating, and 4.) the double brain. Jaynes would have been better served if he had structured the book around these four theses.

So let me now critique the arguments in each of these theses and show why there are substantial reasons to reject each of them.

Thesis #1: Consciousness is based on language. According to Jaynes consciousness is a metaphor of reality and he goes to great lengths to define what a metaphor is. This part of the argument I found confusing with its metaphiers, metaphrands, paraphiers, and paraphrands which appear to be terms that Jaynes invented for his own purposes. Suffice it to say that the implications of this thesis are staggering. It means that human beings had no consciousness before there was language and of course nonhuman animals don't have consciousness either. Since metaphor is a rather advanced stage of language it's not clear at what age Jaynes thinks human beings acquire consciousness. He doesn't really address this issue. The other implications of this thesis are that human beings with cognitive and/or language disabilities are also not conscious. As the father of a nonverbal autistic child I find this claim to be rather ludicrous. I suspect my son is as fully conscious as any other human being. It's just that he lacks the verbal ability to tell us about his introspections. So I completely reject thesis #1.

Thesis #2: The Bicameral Mind
Jaynes describes his bicameral mind as a type of nonconscious mentality in which the right hemisphere of the brain generates auditory (and sometimes visual) hallucinations that are received by the left hemisphere as voices. This is similar to how schizophrenia operates today only in the past such voices were interpreted to be those of the gods. What this has to do with consciousness is a bit perplexing since even schizophrenics are conscious of what the voices are saying and they can tell others exactly what is said and even the tone of the voices. Thus, it would appear that people hearing voices in their heads were conscious to some extent. Jaynes denies this which is one of the central tenets of his entire theory.

In any case, Jaynes envisions entire societies where all of the people heard hallucinated voices which they interpreted as the voices of their gods. The content of these voices were mainly admonitions or commands which enabled the people to survive. All decisions were made by the gods and transmitted to human beings via the voices. Now, this does not sound like a very good basis for the construction of a society for several reasons. First of all, there are bound to be contradictions between the voices. My god tells me to do X and your god tells you to do Y which may be the opposite of X. Since both gods had to be obeyed (another tenet of the theory) we can easily see how conflict would be inherent in such a system. Jaynes tries to step around this issue by claiming that bicameral societies were rigid and hierarchical but I'm not sure it really solves the problem at all. If only the god of the king is to be obeyed first then that necessarily erodes the authority of my personal god who may be telling me different things.

So the possibility of a truly bicameral society is a bit suspect. Jaynes' case would be made much better if he could point to any recently discovered primitive tribe that was bicameral. The highlanders of central New Guinea and the Yanomamo Indians of South America first came into contact with modern civilization in the 20th century. As far as we know none of these recently discovered societies were bicameral in the way that Jaynes is suggesting. That's a bit suspicious in and of itself. So thesis #2 is a bit weak.

Thesis #3: The Dating
By this Jaynes means his historical chronology of the Near East in which the bicameral mind began breaking down in c. 1000 BCE and consciousness arose in Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia in the 1st millennium BCE. In the book Jaynes says the cause of this breakdown was ultimately the eruption of the volcano on the island of Thera which he dates to 1470 BCE or possibly later. This caused massive social disruption and a huge refugee crisis which the bicameral societies of the time could not handle. They thus broke down resulting in the rise of modern consciousness. Modern tree-ring dating puts the Thera eruption back at 1628 BCE which is even earlier than Jaynes thought it was, but it probably doesn't change the argument substantially.

Jaynes doesn't use the term Bronze Age collapse (which occurred in c. 1200 BCE) although he is clearly referring to it. According to his theory bicameral Mycenae, the bicameral Hittite Empire, etc. all collapsed internally due to the stress induced on the bicameral mind which was ultimately caused by a natural catastrophe. Modern scholarship would refute this by claiming that none of these collapses were internal. They were caused by the influx of conquerors from an unknown source collectively known as the Sea Peoples. There is thus no room for a bicameral collapse.

Jaynes' claims about bicameral societies in the Americas are even more ludicrous. He claims that the Mayans and Incans (and presumably the Aztecs too) were bicameral. But since we have detailed chronicles of the Spanish conquest of both the Aztecs and Incas one would imagine that the Spanish conquistadors would have noticed such a difference in mental functioning in their conquered subjects. Both Moctezuma and Atahualpa were captured by the Spanish and kept in confinement for long periods of time. Never once do the Spanish report that their prisoners are being commanded by voices in their heads.

What some might call Jaynes' strongest claims involve the Iliad of Homer. According to Jaynes the Iliad contains no concept of consciousness and its view of the human mind is entirely bicameral. Jaynes chooses the Iliad because he says it is the oldest literary work in which the translation is certain. But then he goes on to say that modern translators have read consciousness into the Iliad when it really wasn't there. I'm certainly not in a position to comment on the meanings of such Greek words as "thumos", "phrenes", etc. and how they changed over time. Jaynes may be right that these words did not imply consciousness when they were used in the Iliad. But I'm not sure what that proves exactly. The ancient Greeks of the Bronze Age also had no word for arteriosclerosis but that does not mean that this particular disease didn't exist in those days.

One side note I will mention in passing. According to Jaynes bicameral man was not capable of deceit. Therefore we should not find any deceit being carried out by the Achaeans or Trojans in the Iliad. That does not seem to be the case. Doesn't Patroclus don Achilles' armor in order to deceive the Trojans into believing that Achilles has taken the field of battle? Not to mention the Trojan horse itself (not covered directly in the Iliad) which is the ultimate deceit. Also, one tends to wonder if bicameral man is incapable of deceit then why are their prohibitions against deceit in both the Ten Commandments of the Hebrews and the Code of Hammurabi, core documents of two supposedly bicameral societies.

Thesis #4: The Double Brain
This is perhaps the least controversial thesis of Jaynes since it does seem to have some solid experimental evidence behind it. It does appear to be the case that right-handed individuals have their language center in the left hemisphere of the brain with the right hemisphere of the brain being mostly nonverbal. Jaynes does present some evidence that the right hemisphere is involved in the auditory hallucinations of schizophrenics. I'd like to know what further research has been conducted in this area since Jaynes' death in 1997. But it's not clear how the neurological evidence for the double brain makes the actual existence of bicameral societies more likely.

So those are my objections in a nutshell. I don't buy Jaynes' theory although I must say that the book is a pleasure to read particularly due to Jaynes' florid writing style. Just thinking about these issues in history, psychology, and neurology is stimulating whether or not you agree with the arguments in the final analysis. So Jaynes certainly has done a great service to all of these various fields by getting people talking about these issues. So I highly recommend the book even though I vehemently disagree with most of the theses asserted in it.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 5, 2022

Published in 1976, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind has explained it all.

Julian Jaynes claims that human consciousness as we know it only began about 3,000 years ago. Before that, humans had a “bicameral mind”. Essentially the right hemisphere of the brain interpreted sensory data, judged, decided and formed language: many of the functions that we consider the basis of consciousness. Useful information was communicated to the left hemisphere of the brain, which spoke, acted and moved, all without being “aware” of what it was doing.

Jaynes provides dozens of metaphors to describe such an alien mind, but the one I found was most useful was a comparison to driving. If I’m driving a car, I might “zone out”. (The operation of the left hemisphere, according to Jaynes, is a little like being permanently zoned out, although he doesn’t use those words.)

If it’s a simple trip, I can still get where I’m going and operate the car flawlessly without paying attentIon, or remembering the trip afterwards. But if it’s a slightly more complicated trip, I might want a friend in the passenger’s seat who will keep close watch on the road and call out “turn right up ahead” or “watch out for that deer!” when necessary. Acting automatically, I can follow his instructions without ever snapping to. Likewise, early man, including people who lived in quite large (although simply structured, as Jaynes says) societies, didn’t need both halves of their brain to march in lockstep. Sumerians, Mycenaeans, Mayans and Incas lived their whole lives “zoned out”, listening to the voices in their heads (whom they naturally regarded as gods).

The key, Jaynes says, is that as the trip gets still more complicated, it’s no longer enough to rely on your friend to backseat drive. If you’re driving on the Cross-Bronx Expressway, it is not practical to listen to somebody say “you’re in that tractor trailer’s blind spot now merge left two lanes look out that guy is driving erratically”

You have to internalize the function of your friend, merge both halves of your brain as it were, and start paying attention *yourself*. Likewise, as human civilization became more complex, it was no longer enough to rely on signals from our right brains. The voices of the gods fade away, and instead we learn to “talk” to ourselves in our own brains.

A corollary of this theory is that when the gods stop talking to us, it’s stressful! It’s hard to take responsibility for our own thoughts and choices. We want the gods back. We want to find some way to communicate with those gods again. And in this way, Jaynes has also explained the basis of all religion. He goes on to explain poetry, hypnotism and schizophrenia. What a smart guy!

So does this theory hold water? I have no idea. Jaynes was a psychologist at Princeton, but his arguments also cite ancient literature and archaeology, neurology, linguistics and philosophy. I don’t have the background to judge any of the evidence he presents, although the frequency with which he says (boasts?) that he is going against the scholarly consensus, freely retranslating ancient texts, is a bad sign.

Moreover, some of it is purely speculative. His explanation of how we developed from non-verbal apes into archaic civilizations is one big just-so story. It sounds plausible, I guess, but there isn’t (and probably never will be) any evidence backing it up.

The writing style might be called grandiose. It reminds me of The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler, another “theory of everything” tome by a polymath academic. A sample:

“… The Old Testament, even as it is hedged with great historical problems of accuracy, still remains our richest source for knowledge of what the transition period was like. It is essentially the story of the loss of the bicameral mind, the slow retreat into silence of the remaining elohim, the confusion and tragic violence which ensue, and the search for them in vain among its prophets until a substitute is found in right action.

“But the mind is still haunted with its old unconscious ways; it broods on lost authorities; and the yearning, the deep and hollowing yearning for divine volition and service is with us still.”

He then proceeds to rewrite the 42nd Psalm to fit his theory.

I haven’t looked, but I’m sure this book hasn’t taken academia by storm. I don’t think there are Jaynesian schools of thought. Although he was an Ivy League professor, he’s probably just another crank. But I don’t care. I don’t even need to know if it’s really true. A book like this is too good to check.