Bicameralism (psychology)

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This article is about the human brain. For other uses, see Bicameralism (disambiguation).

Bicameralism (the philosophy of "two-chamberedness") is a hypothesis in psychology that argues that the human mind once assumed a state in which cognitive functions were divided between one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys—a bicameral mind. The term was coined by Julian Jaynes, who presented the idea in his 1976 book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, wherein he made the case that a bicameral mentality came to be the normal and ubiquitous state of the human mind until as recently as 3000 years ago.

The Origin of Consciousness was financially successful, and has been reprinted several times. Originally published in 1976 (ISBN 0-395-20729-0), it was nominated for the National Book Award in 1978. It has been translated into Italian, Spanish, German, French, and Persian.[citation needed] A new edition, with an afterword that addressed some criticisms and restated the main themes, was published in the US in 1990 and in the UK by Penguin Books in 1993 (ISBN 0-14-017491-5), re-issued in 2000.[1]

The Origin of Consciousness[edit]

Jaynes uses governmental bicameralism as a metaphor to describe a mental state in which the experiences and memories of the right hemisphere of the brain are transmitted to the left hemisphere via auditory hallucinations. The metaphor is based on the idea of lateralization of brain function although each half of a normal human brain is constantly communicating with the other through the corpus callosum. The metaphor is not meant to imply that the two halves of the bicameral brain were "cut off" from each other but that the bicameral mind was experienced as a different, non-conscious mental schema wherein volition in the face of novel stimuli was mediated through a linguistic control mechanism and experienced as auditory verbal hallucination.

The bicameral mentality would be non-conscious in its inability to reason and articulate about mental contents through meta-reflection, reacting without explicitly realizing and without the meta-reflective ability to give an account of why one did so. The bicameral mind would thus lack metaconsciousness, autobiographical memory and the capacity for executive "ego functions" such as deliberate mind-wandering and conscious introspection of mental content. When bicamerality as a method of social control was no longer adaptive in complex civilizations, this mental model was replaced by the conscious mode of thought which, Jaynes argued, is grounded in the acquisition of metaphorical language learned by exposure to narrative practice.

According to Jaynes, ancient people in the bicameral state of mind would have experienced the world in a manner that has some similarities to that of a schizophrenic. Rather than making conscious evaluations in novel or unexpected situations, the person would hallucinate a voice or "god" giving admonitory advice or commands and obey without question: one would not be at all conscious of one's own thought processes per se. Research into "command hallucinations" that often direct the behavior of those labeled schizophrenic, as well as other voice hearers, supports Jaynes's predictions.[2]

Jaynes built a case for this hypothesis that human brains existed in a bicameral state until as recently as 3000 years ago by citing evidence from many diverse sources including historical literature. He took an interdisciplinary approach, drawing data from many different fields.[3] Jaynes asserted that, until roughly the times written about in Homer's Iliad, humans did not generally have the self-awareness characteristic of consciousness as most people experience it today. Rather, the bicameral individual was guided by mental commands believed to be issued by external "gods" — commands which were recorded in ancient myths, legends and historical accounts. This is exemplified not only in the commands given to characters in ancient epics but also the very muses of Greek mythology which "sang" the poems: the ancients figuratively heard muses as the direct source of their music and poetry.

For example, in the Iliad and sections of the Old Testament no mention is made of any kind of cognitive processes such as introspection, and there is no apparent indication that the writers were self-aware. According to Jaynes, the older portions of the Old Testament (such as the Book of Amos) have few or none of the features of some later books of the Old Testament (such as Ecclesiastes) as well as later works such as Homer's Odyssey, which show indications of a profoundly different kind of mentality — an early form of consciousness.[3]

In ancient times, Jaynes noted, gods were generally much more numerous and much more anthropomorphic than in modern times, and speculates that this was because each bicameral person had their own "god" who reflected their own desires and experiences.[4] He also noted that in ancient societies the corpses of the dead were often treated as though still alive (being seated, dressed and even fed) as a form of ancestor worship, and Jaynes argued that the dead bodies were presumed to be still living and the source of auditory hallucinations.[3] This adaptation to the village communities of 100 individuals or more formed the core of religion. Unlike today's hallucinations, the voices of ancient times were structured by cultural norms to produce a seamlessly functioning society. In Ancient Greek culture there is often mention of the Logos, which is a very similar concept. It was a type of guiding voice that was heard as from a seemingly external source.

Jaynes inferred that these "voices" came from the right brain counterparts of the left brain language centres—specifically, the counterparts to Wernicke's area and Broca's area. These regions are somewhat dormant in the right brains of most modern humans, but Jaynes noted that some studies show that auditory hallucinations correspond to increased activity in these areas of the brain.[3]

Jaynes notes that even in modern times[when?] there is no consensus as to the cause or origins of schizophrenia. Jaynes argues that schizophrenia is a vestige of humanity's earlier bicameral state.[3] Recent evidence shows that many schizophrenics do not just hear random voices but experience "command hallucinations" instructing their behavior or urging them to commit certain acts.[full citation needed] As support for Jaynes's argument, these command hallucinations are little different from the commands from gods which feature prominently in ancient stories.[3] Indirect evidence supporting Jaynes's theory that hallucinations once played an important role in human mentality can be found in the recent book Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination by Daniel Smith.[5][improper synthesis?]

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 second millennium BC. He speculates that primitive ancient societies tended to collapse periodically, (as in Egypt's Intermediate Periods and 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 second millennium BC led to mass migrations and created a rash of unexpected situations and stresses that 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.

Jaynes further argues that divination, prayer and oracles arose during this breakdown period, in an attempt to summon instructions from the "gods" whose voices could no longer be heard.[3] The consultation of special bicamerally operative individuals, or of divination by casting lots and so forth, was a response to this loss, a transitional era depicted, for example, in the book of 1 Samuel. It was also evidenced in children who could communicate with the gods, but as their neurology was set by language and society they gradually lost that ability. Those who continued prophesying, being bicameral according to Jaynes, could be killed.[6][7] Leftovers of the bicameral mind today, according to Jaynes, include religion, hypnosis, possession, schizophrenia and the general sense of need for external authority in decision-making.


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

Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion (2006) wrote of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind that, "It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between! Probably the former, but I'm hedging my bets."[9] Some early (1977) reviewers considered Jaynes's hypothesis worthy and offer conditional support, arguing the notion deserves further study.[10][11]

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.[clarification needed][12] Williams (2010)[13] defended Jaynes against the criticism of Block (1981)[14] [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 Assad and Shapiro ([year needed]). In response published in the May 1987 issue, the authors replied that "…Jaynes' hypothesis makes for interesting reading and stimulates much thought in the receptive reader. It does not, however, adequately explain one of the central mysteries of madness: hallucination."[8]

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.[15][16] 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, i.e. 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[17] and Dr. Leo Sher in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience,[18] and further discussed in the book Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness.[19]

The philosopher Daniel Dennett suggested that Jaynes may have been wrong about some of his supporting arguments, especially the importance he attached to hallucinations, but that these things are not essential to his main thesis.[20] He also wrote that:

If we are going to use this top-down approach, we are going to have to be bold. We are going to have to be speculative, but there is good and bad speculation, and this is not an unparalleled activity in science. […] Those scientists who have no taste for this sort of speculative enterprise will just have to stay in the trenches and do without it, while the rest of us risk embarrassing mistakes and have a lot of fun. --Daniel Dennett[21]

Gregory Cochran, a physicist and adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Utah, wrote: "Genes affecting personality, reproductive strategies, cognition, are all able to change significantly over few-millennia time scales if the environment favors such change — and this includes the new environments we have made for ourselves, things like new ways of making a living and new social structures. ... There is evidence that such change has occurred. ... On first reading, Breakdown seemed one of the craziest books ever written, but Jaynes may have been on to something."[22] Author and historian of science Morris Berman writes, "[Jaynes's] description of this new consciousness is one of the best I have come across."[23] Danish science writer Tor Nørretranders discusses Jaynes's theory favorably in his book The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size.[24]

Brian McVeigh (2007) maintains that many of the most frequent criticisms of Jaynes' theory are either incorrect or reflect serious misunderstandings of Jaynes' theory, especially Jaynes' more precise definition of consciousness. Jaynes defines consciousness—in the tradition of Locke and Descartes—as "that which is introspectable." Jaynes draws a sharp distinction between consciousness ("introspectable mind-space") and other mental processes such as cognition, learning, and sense and perception. McVeigh argues that this distinction is frequently not recognized by those offering critiques of Jaynes' theory.[25]

A "Julian Jaynes Society" was founded by supporters of bicameralism in 1997, shortly after Jaynes' death. The society published a collection of essays on bicameralism in 2007,[26] with contributors including psychological anthropologist Brian J. McVeigh, psychologists John Limber and Scott Greer, clinical psychologist John Hamilton, philosophers Jan Sleutels and David Stove, and sinologist Michael Carr (see shi "personator"). The book also contains an extensive biography of Julian Jaynes by historian of psychology William Woodward and June Tower, and a Foreword by neuroscientist Michael Persinger.

Though Jaynes argues that divination and oracles arose in the second millennium due to stresses by earthquakes, humanity has experienced a number of stresses from the very beginning, including by previous ecological disasters and warfare (see Toba catastrophe theory and Ötzi the Copper Age mummy who died from an arrow).

Divination is also considerably older than that date and the early writings he claims show bicamerality; the oldest recorded Chinese Writing was on oracle bones, meaning that divination arose at the same time or even earlier than writing, in Chinese Society.[27]

While he said ancient societies engaged in ancestor worship before this date, non-ancient societies also engaged in it after that date; South American societies like the Aztecs and Egyptians mummified rulers, the Aztecs all the way up to the meeting with Hernan Cortes. Both were very advanced societies, see: Pyramids and the philosopher Nezahualcoyotl.

Julian Jaynes' study is only based on the writings and culture of the Mediterranean and Near-Eastern regions and does not explain how such bicameralism could also have been near totally lost at the same time in the whole planet and in the entire human kind.

DNA tests on the remains of individuals that lived in that time have never been made in order to confirm if the genes responsible for their mindsets actually presented such characteristics.

Since his theory as-present does not provide testable predictions for individuals or societies to develop bicamerality, it is scientifically unprovable.[citation needed]

Similar ideas[edit]

In his book The Master and His Emissary, psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist reviews scientific research into the role of the brain's hemispheres, and cultural evidence, and he proposes that since the time of Plato the left hemisphere of the brain (the "emissary" in the title) has increasingly taken over from the right hemisphere (the "master"), to our detriment. McGilchrist, while accepting Jayne's intention, felt that Jayne's hypothesis was "the precise inverse of what happened" and that rather than a shift from bicameralism there evolved a separation of the hemispheres.[28]

Michael Gazzaniga pioneered the split-brain experiments which led him to propose a similar theory called the left brain interpreter.

It is now known[citation needed] that sense of agency is closely connected with lateralization. The left parietal lobe is active when visualizing actions in the first person, while the right parietal lobe is active for actions in the third person. Additionally, Wernicke's area processes the literal meaning of language, while the homologous region in the right hemisphere processes the intent of a speaker. It has been found that people with damage to the right inferior parietal cortex experience alien hand syndrome, as do people who have had a corpus callosotomy. This reverses the relationship between the right and left hemispheres posited by bicameralism: it is the left hemisphere that "speaks" and the right hemisphere that is responsible for self-awareness.

See also[edit]


  1. ^ Jaynes, Julian (2000) [1976]. The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind (PDF). Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-618-05707-2. 
  2. ^ Erkwoh, R. (2002). "Command Hallucinations: Who Obeys and Who Resists When?". Psychopathology 35. doi:10.1159/000067065. 
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Kuijsten, Marcel (1998–2006). "Summary of Evidence". Retrieved 2006-05-22. 
  4. ^ Stove, D.C. (April 1989). "The Oracles & Their Cessation". Encounter 72 (4): 30–38. ISSN 0013-7073. 
  5. ^ Smith, Daniel (2007). Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination. ISBN 1-59420-110-2. 
  6. ^ Jaynes, Julian (2000) [1976]. The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind (PDF). Houghton Mifflin. p. 221. ISBN 0-618-05707-2. 
  7. ^ Zechariah, 13: 2-3
  8. ^ a b Moffic, H. Steven (May 1987). "What About the Bicameral Mind?". American Journal of Psychiatry 144 (5). 
  9. ^ Dawkins, Richard (2006). The God Delusion. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 1-4303-1230-0. 
  10. ^ Keen, Sam, "Julian Jaynes: Portrait of the Psychologist as a Maverick Theorizer," Psychology Today, November 1977, vol 11, pp. 66-7
  11. ^ Keen, Sam, "The Lost Voices of the Gods (Interview with Julian Jaynes)", Psychology Today, November 1977, vol 11, pp 58-60
  12. ^ Kuijsten, Marcel (2007). Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes's Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited. Julian Jaynes Society. pp. s. 96–100, 169–202. ISBN 0-9790744-0-1. 
  13. ^ Williams, Gary (2010). "What is it like to be nonconscious? A defense of Julian Jaynes". Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. 
  14. ^ 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.
  15. ^ Buchsbaum, M.S. et al. (1982). "Cerebral Glucography with Positron Tomography: Use in Normal Subjects and in Patients with Schizophrenia". Archives of General Psychiatry. 39:251-259 (3): 251–9. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1982.04290030001001. PMID 6978119. 
  16. ^ Kuijsten, Marcel (2009). "New Evidence for Jaynes's Neurological Model: A Research Update". The Jaynesian 3:1. 
  17. ^ Olin, Robert (1999). "Auditory Hallucinations and the Bicameral Mind". Lancet 354 (9173): 166. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)75304-6. PMID 10408523. 
  18. ^ Sher, Leo (May 2000). "Neuroimaging, Auditory Hallucinations, and the Bicameral Mind". Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience 25 (3): 239–240. PMC 1407719. PMID 10863883. 
  19. ^ Kuijsten, Marcel (2007). Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes's Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited. Julian Jaynes Society. pp. s. 116–120. ISBN 0-9790744-0-1. 
  20. ^ Dennett, Daniel (1986). "Julian Jaynes's Software Archeology". Canadian Psychology 27 (2). 
  21. ^ Daniel Dennett (1998) "Julian Jaynes’s Software Archeology." In: Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds.
  22. ^ Edge Foundation (2006). "What Is Your Dangerous Idea?"
  23. ^ Berman, Morris (2000). Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality. ISBN 0-7914-4442-2. 
  24. ^ Nørretranders, Tor (1991). User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size. ISBN 0-7139-9182-8. 
  25. ^ McVeigh, Brian (2007). "Elephants in the Psychology Department: Overcoming Intellectual Barriers to Understanding Julian Jaynes's Theory". Julian Jaynes Society. 
  26. ^ Kuijsten, Marcel (2007). Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes's Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited. Julian Jaynes Society. ISBN 0-9790744-0-1. 
  27. ^ "Oldest Chinese Writing". 
  28. ^ McGilchrist, Iain (2009). The Master and his Emissary. Yale University Press. p. 262. I believe he [Jayne] got one important aspect of the story back to front. His contention that the phenomena he describes came about because of a breakdown of the 'bicameral mind' - so that the two hemispheres, previously separate, now merged - is the precise inverse of what happened. 

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