Julian Jaynes

Julian Jaynes (February 27, 1920 – November 21, 1997) was an American researcher in psychology at Yale and Princeton for nearly 25 years and best known for his 1976 book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.[1] His career was dedicated to the problem of consciousness, "…the difference between what others see of us and our sense of our inner selves and the deep feelings that sustain it. … Men have been conscious of the problem of consciousness almost since consciousness began."[1]:2 Jaynes's solution touches on many disciplines, including neuroscience, linguistics, psychology, archeology, history, religion and analysis of ancient texts.

Julian Jaynes
BornFebruary 27, 1920
West Newton, Massachusetts
DiedNovember 21, 1997(1997-11-21) (aged 77)
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island
Alma mater
OccupationPsychologist, professor, writer

Life

Jaynes was born in West Newton, Massachusetts, son of Julian Clifford Jaynes (1854–1922), a Unitarian minister, and Clara Bullard Jaynes (1884–1980). He attended Harvard University, was an undergraduate at McGill University and afterwards received master's and doctorate degrees from Yale University. He was mentored by Frank A. Beach and was a close friend of Edwin G. Boring.[2] Jaynes also spent several years in prison for refusing to participate in the second World War.[3]

During this time period Jaynes made significant contributions in the fields of animal behavior and ethology. After Yale, Jaynes spent several years in England working as an actor and playwright. Jaynes later returned to the United States and lectured in psychology at Princeton University from 1966 to 1990, teaching a popular class on consciousness for much of that time. He was in high demand as a lecturer and was frequently invited to lecture at conferences and as a guest lecturer at other universities. In 1984, he was invited to give the plenary lecture at the Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg, Austria. He gave six major lectures in 1985 and nine in 1986. He was awarded an honorary PhD by Rhode Island College in 1979 and another from Elizabethtown College in 1985.[2] He died at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, on November 21, 1997.

Research and motivations

Jaynes had dedicated years of research in psychology to the problem of consciousness[4]:72 and he had sought the roots of consciousness in the processes of learning and cognition that animals and humans shared in common, in accord with prevailing evolutionary assumptions that dominated mid-20th century thinking.[2] He had established his reputation in the study of animal learning and natural animal behaviour, and in 1968 he lectured on the history of comparative psychology at the National Science Foundation Summer Institute. In September 1969 he gave his first public address on his “new theory of consciousness” at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association.[2]:31–34 In the years following, Jaynes “presented his talk on the origin of consciousness widely, as word of his slightly outrageous but tantalizing theory had spread.”[2]:37 His “radical approach”[5] to the problem of consciousness, which he explained as a phenomenon dependent on language and culture more than on the physiology of the brain, challenged mainstream assumptions of 20th century research, especially of the behaviorists who, “under the tutelage of John Watson, solved the problem of consciousness by ignoring it.”[5]:315

Already in 1972 Jaynes had delivered a paper, “The Origin of Consciousness”, at Cornell University, writing: “For if consciousness is based on language, then it follows that only humans are conscious, and that we became so at some historical epoch after language was evolved.”[2]:38 This took Jaynes, as he put it, directly into “. . . the earliest writings of mankind to see if we can find any hints as to when this important invention of consciousness might have occurred.”[2]:38 He went to ancient texts searching for early evidence of consciousness, and found what he believed to be evidence of remarkably recent voice-hearing without consciousness. In the semi-historical Greek epic the Iliad Jaynes found “. . .the earliest writing of men in a language that we can really comprehend, [which] when looked at objectively, reveals a very different mentality from our own.”[1]:82 In a 1978 interview, Richard Rhodes reported that Jaynes “took up the study of Greek to trace Greek words for mind back to their origins. By the time he got to the Iliad, the words had become concrete, but there is no word for mind in the Iliad at all.”[4]:74

Publications and theories

Jaynes's one and only book, published in 1976, is The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. The topic of consciousness – "the human ability to introspect"[6] - is introduced by reviewing prior efforts to explain its problematic nature: those efforts, as one of Jaynes's early critics has acknowledged, add up to a "spectacular history of failure".[7] Abandoning the assumption that consciousness is innate, Jaynes explains it instead as a learned behavior that "arises ... from language, and specifically from metaphor."[7] With this understanding, Jaynes then demonstrates that ancient texts and archeology can reveal a history of human mentality alongside the histories of other cultural products. His analysis of the evidence leads him not only to place the origin of consciousness during the 2nd millennium BCE but also to hypothesize the existence of an older non-conscious "mentality that he calls the bicameral mind, referring to the brain’s two hemispheres".[8]

Jaynes wrote an extensive afterword for the 1990 edition of his book, in which he addressed criticisms and clarified that his theory has four separate hypotheses: 1) consciousness is based on and accessed by language; 2) the non-conscious bicameral mind is based on verbal hallucinations; 3) the breakdown of bicameral mind precedes consciousness, but the dating is variable; 4) the 'double brain' of bicamerality is based on the two cerebral hemispheres organized differently from today's functional lateralization. He also expanded on the impact of consciousness on imagination and memory, notions of The Self, emotions, anxiety, guilt, and sexuality.

Notes
  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. Woodward, William R.; Tower, June F. (2006). "Julian Jaynes: Introducing His Life and Thought". In Kuijsten, Marcel (ed.). Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes's Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited. Chapter 1. Henderson, NV: Julian Jaynes Society. pp. 13–68. ISBN 978-0-9790744-0-0.
  3. Gara, Larry (1999). A Few Small Candles: War Resisters of World War II Tell Their Stories. Kent State University Press. ISBN 978-0-87338-621-0.
  4. Rhodes, Richard (January–February 1978). "Alone in the country of the mind: the origin of Julian Jaynes (Interview)". Quest/78. Pasadena: Ambassador International Cultural Foundation. 2 (1): 71–78.
  5. Morriss, James E. (1978). "Reflections on Julian Jaynes's THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND: An Essay Review" (PDF). ETC: A Review of General Semantics. 35 (3): 314–327.
  6. Kuijsten, Marcel (2016). "Introduction". In Kuijsten, Marcel (ed.). Gods, Voices and the Bicameral Mind: The Theories of Julian Jaynes (First ed.). Henderson NV: Julian Jaynes Society. ISBN 978-0-9790744-3-1.
  7. Jones, William Thomas (1979) Mr. Jaynes and the bicameral mind: a case study in the sociology of belief. Humanities Working Paper, 23. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20090714-105138181
  8. Kuijsten, Marcel (2006). "Introduction". In Kuijsten, Marcel (ed.). Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes's Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited (First ed.). Henderson NV: Julian Jaynes Society. ISBN 978-0-9790744-0-0.

Bibliography
  • (Contributor) W. S. Dillon, editor, Man and Beast: Comparative Social Behavior, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC), 1970.
  • (Contributor) C. C. Gillespie and others, editors, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Scribner (New York, NY), 1970.
  • Henle, Mary; Jaynes, Julian; Sullivan, John J. Historical conceptions of psychology. Oxford, England: Springer. 1973.
  • Jaynes, Julian (1990) [1st pub. 1976; 1982]. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-56352-6.
  • (Editor, with others) The Lateralization of the Nervous System, Academic Press, 1977.
  • Der Ursprung des Bewusstseins durch den Zusammenbruch der Bikameralen Psyche (German edition of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind)
  • El Origen de la Conciencia en la Ruptura de la Mente Bicameral (Spanish edition of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind)
  • La Naissance de la Conscience dans L’Effondrement de L’Esprit Bicaméral (French edition of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind)
  • Il Crollo della Mente Bicamerale e L’origine della Coscienza (Italian edition of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind)
  • Morriss, James E. (1978). "Reflections on Julian Jaynes's THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND: An Essay Review" (PDF). ETC: A Review of General Semantics. 35 (3): 314–327.
  • Rhodes, Richard (January–February 1978). "Alone in the country of the mind: the origin of Julian Jaynes (Interview)". Quest/78. Pasadena: Ambassador International Cultural Foundation. 2 (1): 71–78.
  • Woodward, William R.; Tower, June F. (2006). "Julian Jaynes: Introducing His Life and Thought". In Kuijsten, Marcel (ed.). Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes's Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited. Chapter 1. Henderson, NV: Julian Jaynes Society. pp. 13–68. ISBN 978-0-9790744-0-0.

See also
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