Bicameralism (psychology)

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"Bicameral mind" redirects here. For the Westworld episode, see The Bicameral Mind. For other uses, see Bicameralism (disambiguation).



The Origin of Consciousness[edit]









Breakdown of bicameralism[edit]

Jaynes theorized that a shift from bicameralism marked the beginning of introspection and consciousness as we know it today. According to Jaynes, this bicameral mentality began malfunctioning or "breaking down" during the 2nd millennium BCE. He speculates that primitive ancient societies tended to collapse periodically (e.g., Egypt's Intermediate Periods, as well as the periodically vanishing cities of the Mayas) as changes in the environment strained the socio-cultural equilibria sustained by this bicameral mindset. The Bronze age collapse of the 2nd millennium BCE led to mass migrations and created a rash of unexpected situations and stresses which required ancient minds to become more flexible and creative. Self-awareness, or consciousness, was the culturally evolved solution to this problem. This necessity of communicating commonly observed phenomena among individuals who shared no common language or cultural upbringing encouraged those communities to become self-aware to survive in a new environment. Thus consciousness, like bicamerality, emerged as a neurological adaptation to social complexity in a changing world.[citation needed]



Jaynes's hypothesis remains controversial. The primary scientific criticism has been that the conclusions drawn by Jaynes had no basis in neuropsychiatric fact.[8]




According to Jaynes, language is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for consciousness: language existed thousands of years earlier, but consciousness could not have emerged without language.[12] The idea that language is a necessary component of subjective consciousness and more abstract forms of thinking has gained the support of proponents including Andy Clark, Daniel Dennett, William H. Calvin, Merlin Donald, John Limber, Howard Margolis, Peter Carruthers, and José Luis Bermúdez.[13]

Williams (2010) defended Jaynes against the criticism of Block (1981).[clarification needed][14][15] [clarification needed]

In a 1987 letter to the American Journal of Psychiatry, H. Steven Moffic questioned why Jaynes's theory was left out of a discussion on auditory hallucinations by Asaad and Shapiro.[16] In response published in the May 1987 issue, the authors replied:


Drs. Asaad and Shapiro's comment that there is no evidence for involvement of the right temporal lobe in auditory hallucination was incorrect even at that time.[17][18] A number of more recent studies provide additional evidence to right hemisphere involvement in auditory hallucinations. Recent neuroimaging studies provide new evidence for Jaynes's neurological model (e.g., auditory hallucinations arising in the right temporal-parietal lobe and being transmitted to the left temporal-parietal lobe). This was pointed out by Dr. Robert Olin in Lancet[19] and Dr. Leo Sher in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience,[20] and further discussed in the book Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness.[21]





Author and historian of science Morris Berman writes: "[Jaynes's] description of this new consciousness is one of the best I have come across."[25]


As an argument against Jaynes' proposed date of the transition from bicameralism to consciousness, one might refer to the Gilgamesh Epic. It is supposedly many centuries older than even the oldest passages of the Old Testament, and yet it describes introspection and other mental processes that, according to Jaynes, were impossible for the bicameral mind. Jaynes himself, noting that the most complete version of the Gilgamesh epic dates to post-bicameral times (7th century BCE), dismisses these instances of introspection as the result of rewriting and expansion by later conscious scribes, and points to differences between the more recent version of Gilgamesh and surviving fragments of earlier versions. ("The most interesting comparison is in Tablet X.")[27]

This, however, fails to account for either the generally accepted dating of the "Standard Version" of the epic to the later 2nd millennium BCE or the fact that the introspection so often taken as characteristic of the "Standard Version" seems more thoroughly rooted in the Old Babylonian and Sumerian versions than previously thought, especially as our understanding of the Old Babylonian poem emerges.[28]




While he said ancient societies engaged in ancestor worship before this date, non-ancient societies also engaged in it after that date; very advanced societies like the Aztecs and Egyptians mummified rulers (see Pyramids and the philosopher Nezahualcoyotl), the Aztecs all the way up to the meeting with Hernan Cortes.[citation needed]

Julian Jaynes' study is mostly based on the writings and culture of the Mediterranean and Near-Eastern regions, although he occasionally also refers to ancient writings of India and China.[32][33] It does not explain how such bicameralism could also have been near totally lost at the same time across the whole planet and in the entire human kind. In particular the aborigine culture was completely separated from the rest of the world from 4000 BCE to 1600 CE and appears today to be both historically unchanged but also self-conscious.[citation needed]

Similar ideas[edit]

In his books Prometheus Rising and Quantum Psychology, transactional psychologist and author Robert Anton Wilson proposes a similar theory, referring to the right cortical hemisphere as "Thinker" and the left cortical hemisphere as "Prover". He summarizes his concept as "Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves."

VS Ramachandran proposes a similar theory as well, referring to the left cortical hemisphere as an "Apologist", and the right cortical hemisphere as a "Revolutionary".

In his book Neuroreality, Bruce E. Morton, Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii, similarly proposed such a concept.




Neuroscientist Michael Persinger, who co-invented the God helmet in the 1980s, believes that his invention may induce mystical experiences by having the separate right hemisphere consciousness intrude into the awareness of the normally-dominant left hemisphere.[35]

In popular culture[edit]

In literature, the 1992 novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson involves an attempt to return humans to their bicameral, pre-conscious state. It contains some of the illustrations used in Jaynes' book. The 2005 novel Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks also contains themes of bicameralism. The Rage of Achilles, a 2009 novel by Terence Hawkins, recounts The Iliad in terms of the transition from bicameral to modern consciousness.

The 2016 sci-fi television series Westworld invoked bicameralism as the model for the development of consciousness in its android "hosts", as represented for example in the season 1 finale "The Bicameral Mind". Within the series narrative, the hosts' designer admits that the theory was largely rejected, but working with it was still helpful for designing the hosts' higher cognitive functions.

See also[edit]


  2. ^ Erkwoh, R. (2002). "Command Hallucinations: Who Obeys and Who Resists When?". Psychopathology. 35: 272–279. doi:10.1159/000067065. 
  4. ^ Stove, D.C. (April 1989). "The Oracles & Their Cessation". Encounter. 72 (4): 30–38. ISSN 0013-7073. 
  7. ^ Zechariah, 13: 2-3
  8. ^ a b Moffic, H. Steven (May 1987). "What About the Bicameral Mind?". American Journal of Psychiatry. 144 (5). 
  12. ^ Jaynes, Julian (2000) [1976]. The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind (PDF). Houghton Mifflin. p. 66. ISBN 0-618-05707-2. 
  14. ^ Williams, Gary (2010). "What is it like to be nonconscious? A defense of Julian Jaynes". Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. 10: 217–239. doi:10.1007/s11097-010-9181-z. 
  15. ^ Block, N (1981). "Review of Julian Jayne's Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". Cognition and Brain Theory. 4: 81–83. 
  16. ^ Asaad, G.; Shapiro, B. (Sep 1986). "Hallucinations: theoretical and clinical overview". American Journal of Psychiatry. 143 (9): 1088–1097. doi:10.1176/ajp.143.9.1088. PMID 2875662. 
  17. ^ Buchsbaum, M.S.; et al. (1982). "Cerebral Glucography with Positron Tomography: Use in Normal Subjects and in Patients with Schizophrenia". Archives of General Psychiatry. 39 (3): 251–9. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1982.04290030001001. PMID 6978119. 
  18. ^ Kuijsten, Marcel (2009). "New Evidence for Jaynes's Neurological Model: A Research Update". The Jaynesian. 3:1. 
  19. ^ Olin, Robert (1999). "Auditory Hallucinations and the Bicameral Mind". Lancet. 354 (9173): 166. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)75304-6. PMID 10408523. 
  20. ^ Sher, Leo (May 2000). "Neuroimaging, Auditory Hallucinations, and the Bicameral Mind". Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience. 25 (3): 239–240. PMC 1407719Freely accessible. PMID 10863883. 
  22. ^ Dennett, Daniel (1986). "Julian Jaynes's Software Archeology". Canadian Psychology. 27 (2). 
  24. ^ Edge Foundation (2006). "What Is Your Dangerous Idea?"
  27. ^ Jaynes, Julian (2000) [1976]. The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind (PDF). Houghton Mifflin. p. 252. ISBN 0-618-05707-2. 
  28. ^ See A.R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, for a through overview of the current understanding of the Gilgamesh Epic's textual history.
  31. ^ "Oldest Chinese Writing". 
  32. ^ Jaynes, Julian (2000) [1976]. The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind (PDF). Houghton Mifflin. pp. 312–313. ISBN 0-618-05707-2. 
  33. ^ According to Jaynes, Indian Veda literature dates clearly from the bicameral age whereas Upanishads very clearly show a developed subjectivelt conscious mind, as do Confucius's teachings in China.
  35. ^ Persinger, M A (1993). "Vectorial cerebral hemisphericity as differential sources for the sensed presence, mystical experiences and religious conversions". Perceptual and motor skills. 76 (3 Pt 1): 915–30. doi:10.2466/pms.1993.76.3.915. PMID 8321608. 

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