What if Julian Jaynes Was Right?

In 1977, Princeton University psychologist Julian Jaynes published his controversial book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Hardly a title that should have captured the public imagination, but it managed to create a stir in the media, among Jaynes’ peers, as well as among other scientists. And, surprisingly for an academic work, it sold out its first printing. It went through new printings in 1990, 1993, and 2000. It was criticized, attacked, and debunked at the time, but also praised, debated and discussed. It still is, albeit not with the same vigour that attended its first printing.

Why I raised Jaynes is because during the last few years, I have read and heard comments about Talibangelists and Repugnicans like US Speaker and abject MAGA puppet Mike Johnson, who say publicly that they heard the voice of their god speaking directly to them. While that may sound like schizophrenia to most people — hearing the voice of an imaginary friend speaking in your head that no one else can hear seems to be at the very least delusional — it also meshes with what Jaynes wrote about the bicameral mind. Listening to Johnson speak (aside from his blatant sycophancy, lies, and MAGA stupidity) about his hallucinatory ‘religious’ experience, either seems an accurate view.*

Let me explain, first by sharing this from the site of the Julian Jaynes  Society (emphasis added):

Jaynes asserts that consciousness did not arise far back in human evolution but is a learned process based on metaphorical language. Prior to the development of consciousness, Jaynes argues humans operated under a previous mentality he called the bicameral (‘two-chambered’) mind. In the place of an internal dialogue, bicameral people experienced auditory hallucinations directing their actions, similar to the command hallucinations experienced by many people who hear voices today. These hallucinations were interpreted as the voices of chiefs, rulers, or the gods.

Got that? Pre-technological people heard and obeyed voices in their heads that they thought were coming from the gods, but in fact were coming from one half of their own brain. Do you think that sounds like Mike Johnson and the other MAGA Talibangelists who claim to hear the voice of their god speaking inside their heads? Me, too.

Jaynes was not only a psychologist but also an expert in ancient languages (which feature significantly in the book, and Jaynes himself wrote, “Consciousness is based on language.”). In the preface to his book, he wrote, “preceding consciousness there was a different mentality based on verbal hallucinations… Apart from this theory, why are there gods? Why religions? Why does all ancient literature seem to be about gods and usually heard from gods?” In his essay, Consciousness and the Voices of the Mind, Jaynes added that, “Consciousness is constantly fitting things into a story, putting a before and an after around any event.”**

Religion, it seems, sprung from biology: one lobe of the human brain trying to communicate with the other. That doesn’t do Jaynes’ theory justice, and it deserves better than I can muster, so I recommend you at least read his essay about consciousness, linked above.

So what about this “bicameral mind?” Wikipedia adds,

In his book, Jaynes examines historical texts and archaeological evidence to support his theory. He places the origin of consciousness around the 2nd millennium BCE and suggests that the transition from the bicameral mind to consciousness was triggered by the breakdown of the bicameral system. The bicameral mind, he explains, was characterized by individuals experiencing auditory hallucinations as commands from gods, guiding their actions.

So, Jaynes is suggesting that consciousness (and its offspring, the modern world) came about through the breakdown of the primitive gods-in-your-head mind, an erosion expedited by the invention of writing. Fascinating stuff. ***

Johnson is not, of course, alone in having such auditory hallucinations. Many religious people have them — rightwing Talibangelists and pseudo-Christian MAGA cultists in particular claim personal conversations with their god — as have many serial killers like “Son of Sam” and the Yorkshire Ripper — all believing their god or some sub-god, angel, or saint is speaking to them directly, although no one else present is ever privy to the sound. The hearers often justify their antisocial, violent, misogynistic or misanthropic actions as their god’s directions that only they can hear. And this is where Jaynes comes in, as the first writer to explore the imagined voices of sky people as a serious intellectual discipline, not merely an occasional delusion. Johnson’s claims to hear his deity seem to me to give credibility to Jaynes’ theories.

Jaynes himself suggests that people who hear those imaginary gods are similar to schizophrenics: “… the verbal hallucinations heard by schizophrenics and others are similar to those once heard by bicameral people…” But, of course, it could be simply that Johnson is lying, as he has done many times during his political career. And that would not be out of character for MAGA cultists. Or their fascist leader…

There is no question that Johnson and many of his Talibangelist peers suffer from hallucinations. But are they merely delusional (a description applicable to pretty much all of MAGA conspiracies and ideologies, not just religious hallucinations)? Are they schizophrenic? Or are they a genetic throwback from the Neolithic when, as Jaynes theorizes, people had bicameral minds and the voices in their heads were merely their own, lonely half-brain speaking to them? Is Johnson an example of someone regressing to a neurologically more primitive state? Well, of course, that, too, could be said of all MAGA cultists and their conspiracy-addled brains…

I am not qualified to make any formal analysis or diagnosis of Johnson, his pseudo-Christian colleagues, or anyone who has auditory hallucinations. But it does make me think that Jaynes might have been right, at least about the voices these people hear: it’s just their own lonely brains trying to talk to themselves.

Notes:

* From a 2023 article in Slate (emphasis added):

In a speech at a gala celebrating right-wing Christian lawmakers on Tuesday night, House Speaker Mike Johnson thanked the event organizers for kicking reporters out. “I’ll tell you a secret since the media’s not here,” he promised them. (It’s unclear if Johnson knew that the event’s organizer would post a video of the gala on his personal Facebook page.)
That secret was a series of conversations he’d had with God in the lead-up to the speaker vote that anointed him…

So it’s not just hearing voices; Johnson has whole conversations with himself. And from Rolling Stone:

Johnson then revealed that — in the lead up to the “tumult” of Kevin McCarthy losing his gavel and the chaotic GOP process of selecting new Speaker — he had been speaking directly to God. “Look, I’m a Southern Baptist, I don’t wanna get too spooky on you,” he said, provoking some laughter from the attendees. “But, you know, the Lord speaks to your heart.” As Johnson continued speaking, he mentioned that, once Kevin McCarthy was removed as a U.S. House of Representatives speaker, God was preparing him for the speaker’s role.

And from Uinterview.com (emphasis added):

“The Lord impressed upon my heart a few weeks before this happened that something was going to occur,” he said. “And the Lord very specifically told me in my prayers to prepare but to wait. I had this sense that we were going to come to a Red Sea moment in our Republican conference and the country at large. Look, I’m a Southern Baptist. I don’t want to get too spooky on you, ok? But the Lord speaks to your heart. And he had been speaking to me about this. And the Lord told me very clearly to prepare. Ok, prepare for what? I don’t know. ‘We’re coming to a Red Sea moment.’ ‘What does that mean, Lord?’”
In the Bible’s Exodus story, Moses parted a body of water, traditionally considered the Red Sea, so that he could lead the Israelites out of Egypt.
“I started praying more about that,’ he continued. “And the Lord began to wake me up through this three-week process we were in, in the middle of the night, and to speak to me. And [I started] to write things down, plans and procedures and ideas on how we could pull the conference together. I assumed the Lord was going to choose a new Moses. And ‘Oh, thank you, Lord: You’re going to allow me to be Aaron to Moses.’ [In the Hebrew Bible, Aaron is Moses’ brother and a priest who helps him.] I worked to get Steve Scalise elected. And then Jim Jordan. And Tom Emmer. Thirteen people ran for the post. The Lord kept telling me to wait. And I waited and waited. And it came to the end, and the Lord said, ‘Now, step forward.’ ‘Me? I’m supposed to be Aaron.’”

You would think that an omnipotent deity could make its voice heard by others so at the very least there would be some verification, some witnesses. Or make it recordable, write it in the sky, have a talking donkey shout it out. But no, it’s always heard only inside the hearer’s head. And why do these believers never question whether it is the voice of their devil, instead?

Mary Trump, the fascist dictator’s niece, responded to Johnson’s claims, saying, “If Mike Johnson doesn’t believe this, he’s a manipulative cynic. If he does, he’s psychotic. Either way, he’s a massive megalomaniac. If he wants to pretend he’s Moses, he can start by removing himself to the desert for 40 years.”

** From the same article by Jaynes (emphasis added):

…who makes the decisions? Whenever a significant choice is to be made, a voice comes in telling people what to do. These voices are always and immediately obeyed. These voices are called gods. To me this is the origin of gods. I regard them as auditory hallucinations similar to, although not precisely the same as, the voices heard by Joan of Arc or William Blake. Or similar to the voices that modern schizophrenics hear. Similar perhaps to the voices that some of you may have heard. While it is regarded as a very significant symptom in the diagnosis of schizophrenia, auditory hallucinations also occur in some form at some time in about half the general population (Posey & Losch, 1983). I have also corresponded with or interviewed people who are completely normal in function but who suddenly have a period of hearing extensive verbal hallucinations, usually of a religious sort. Verbal hallucinations are common today, but in early civilization I suggest that they were universal.

*** Jaynes, p. 453-454 (emphasis added): “This dating I think can be seen in the evidence from Mesopotamia, where the breakdown of the bicameral mind, beginning about 1200 B.C., is quite clear. It was due to chaotic social disorganizations, to overpopulation, and probably to the success of writing in replacing the auditory mode of command. This breakdown resulted in many practices we would now call religious which were efforts to return to the lost voices of the gods, e.g., prayer, religious worship, and particularly the many types of divination I have described, which are new ways of making decisions by supposedly returning to the directions of gods by simple analogy.”

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