
Advertise on podcast: Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind - The Julian Jaynes Society Podcast
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This podcast has
31 episodes
Language
EnglishPublisher
Julian Jaynes SocietyExplicit
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Date created
2024/03/21
Latest episode
2026/01/29
Average duration
31 min.
Release period
40 days
Description
Listen to "Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind: The Julian Jaynes Society Podcast," where we explore Princeton University psychologist Julian Jaynes's theory of the origin of consciousness and the bicameral mind, as described in his best selling book, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind." Produced by Julian Jaynes Society Executive Director Marcel Kuijsten. Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
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Check latest episodes from Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind - The Julian Jaynes Society Podcast podcast
The Invention of the Mind | Julian Jaynes's Ideas on Consciousness and the Self
2026/01/29
The Invention of the Mind: Julian Jaynes's Ideas on Consciousness and the Self
Let's start with a question that sounds, well, it sounds super simple: "Where do our dreams come from?" I mean, for us, right now, the answer feels totally obvious -- almost instinctual. Our dreams, are feelings -- all that stuff -- it comes from that private universe inside our own heads. This quote from the Romantic era just nails it. Our inner life, that personal passion, it's not just a part of who we are, it feels like the whole point of our existence. So, let's start right there -- let's dive into this private universe we all seem to have -- the modern inner world...
Produced by Marcel Kuijsten.
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
Read our latest book, "Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind":https://www.julianjaynes.org/book/conversations-on-consciousness-and-the-bicameral-mind/
Contents:
00:00 - Introduction0
0:30 - Our Private Universe
01:12 - An Ancient Dream Book
03:12 - A Different Mind
04:41 - Divine Message to Self
05:47 - The Birth of 'Me'
30. Consciousness Is More “Nurture” than “Nature”
2025/12/30
Consciousness Is More “Nurture” than “Nature”
But Like a Massive Planet, the Gravitational Pull of the Word “Consciousness” Drags our Thinking in the Wrong Direction, Warping Scientific AnalysisBy Brian J. McVeigh
Produced by Marcel Kuijsten. Read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
The nature-versus-nurture debate has framed discussions about the origins of mind for centuries: Is it innate or acquired? Has it biologically evolved or is it better understood as the product of historical development? To what degree is it learned? To be more specific, what about consciousness, understood here as one aspect of mind?Read the complete text from this episode:
https://www.julianjaynes.org/2023/02/14/consciousness-is-more-nurture-than-nature/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
29. The God-Shaped Hole in Your Mind: Julian Jaynes’s Groundbreaking Ideas Explained in Just 16 Minutes
2025/08/12
The God-Shaped Hole in Your Mind: Julian Jaynes’s Groundbreaking Ideas on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind Explained in Just 16 Minutes
What if human consciousness, as we know it, is a recent invention? In this fast-paced 16-minute presentation, we explore the revolutionary theory of psychologist Julian Jaynes — a mind-bending journey into the origins of thought, the voices of ancient gods, and the breakdown of the “bicameral mind.” Whether you’re new to Jaynes’s work or revisiting his ideas with fresh eyes, you’ll leave with a new perspective on what it means to be conscious — and why that might not be as timeless as we think.
Produced by Marcel Kuijsten.
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
Read our latest book, "Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind":
https://www.julianjaynes.org/book/conversations-on-consciousness-and-the-bicameral-mind/
28. Bicameral Mentality in Ancient Mesopotamia: A Deep Dive Discussion
2025/07/24
Bicameral Mentality in Ancient Mesopotamia: A Deep Dive Discussion
A deep dive discussion delving into the evidence for bicameral mentality in ancient Mesopotamia, building on Julian Jaynes's chapter "A Change of Mind in Mesopotamia" by drawing upon a wide range of scholarly sources.
Produced by Marcel Kuijsten. Introduction read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
Read the transcript: https://www.julianjaynes.org/2025/07/30/bicameral-mentality-in-ancient-mesopotamia/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
27. Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind: A Deep Dive Book Discussion
2025/06/20
Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind: A Deep Dive Book Discussion
A deep dive discussion delving into the book "Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind: Interviews with Leading Thinkers on Julian Jaynes's Theory."
This book is highly recommended for those new to Julian Jaynes and long time Jaynes enthusiasts alike:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1737305534/
Introduction read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
Contents:
00:00 - Introduction
03:12 - Resistance to New Ideas
03:52 - Defining Consciousness
09:40 - Consciousness and Language Part 1
13:38 - When Consciousness Developed
16:39 - Comparing the Iliad and the Odyssey
18:30 - The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
19:35 - Vestiges of Bicameral Mentality
19:59 - Hearing Voices
24:02 - The Feeling of a Sensed Presence
25:18 - Hypnosis
27:58 - Creative Inspiration
28:40 - The Evolution of Religion
30:28 - Spirit Possession
30:54 - Cave Art
31:25 - Seeking External Authorization
32:18 - Consciousness and Language Part 2
35:55 - Jaynes's Neurological Model
41:17 - Implications of the Theory
45:20 - The Future of Consciousness
47:00 - Concluding Remarks
26. Consciousness and Bicameral Mentality: A Deep Dive Discussion Exploring Nearly Every Aspect of Julian Jaynes's Theory
2025/06/06
Consciousness and Bicameral Mentality: A Deep Dive Discussion Exploring Nearly Every Aspect of Julian Jaynes's Theory
A fascinating, deep dive discussion that provides an in-depth exploration of nearly every aspect of Julian Jaynes's theory of the origin of consciousness and an earlier mentality he called the bicameral mind.
Highly recommended for those new to Julian Jaynes and long time Jaynes enthusiasts alike!
Read the transcript: https://www.julianjaynes.org/2025/06/08/consciousness-and-bicameral-mentality/
Produced by Camille Tillier and Marcel Kuijsten. Introduction read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
Contents:
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:02:51 - Jaynes's Core Claims
00:03:22 - The Origin of Consciousness
00:10:40 - Bicameral Mentality
00:17:52 - Wide-Ranging Implications
00:27:42 - Literary Evidence: Ancient Greece
00:32:50 - Literary Evidence: Mesopotamia
00:38:55 - Literary Evidence: Ancient Egypt
00:41:00 - Archeological Evidence
00:45:02 - Neurological Evidence
00:48:00 - What It Was Like to Be Bicameral
00:52:03 - Absence of Deception and Morality
00:57:21 - The Causes of Consciousness
01:03:06 - Bicameral Vestiges: Omens
01:06:18 - Bicameral Vestiges: Angels and Genii
01:07:43 - Bicameral Vestiges: Oracles and Divination
01:10:37 - Bicameral Vestiges: Tourette Syndrome and Glossolalia
01:11:24 - Bicameral Vestiges: Poetry and Music
01:14:42 - Bicameral Vestiges: Hypnosis
01:17:46 - Bicameral Vestiges: Schizophrenia
01:20:54 - Bicameral Vestiges: Imaginary Companions
01:21:57 - Bicameral Vestiges: Totalitarian States
01:23:12 - New Evidence for Jaynes's Theory
01:30:23 - Profound Implications: Consciousness
01:32:16 - Profound Implications: Religion
01:33:12 - Profound Implications: The Nature of Reality
01:33:55 - Profound Implications: The Human Condition
01:35:25 - Concluding Remarks and the Future of Consciousness
25. Consciousness and Dreams
2025/03/11
Consciousness and Dreams
By Marcel Kuijsten“In The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes discusses a variety of forms of evidence for the transition from a bicameral mentality to consciousness. The study of dreams provides another window through which to examine this transition. By extension, historical changes in the nature of dreams support the idea that consciousness is in a learned process based on language and not biologically innate. There is a common assumption that the nature of dreams has been consistent throughout recorded history, yet this is not the case. If we analyze the first recorded accounts of dreams and compare these accounts with modern dreams, we see a stark contrast. …”
This essay originally appeared in The Jaynesian, Marcel Kuijsten & Brian J. McVeigh (eds.), Winter 2010, Volume 4, Issue 1.
Produced by Marcel Kuijsten. Read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
24. Julian Jaynes' Theory of the Origin of Consciousness | Interview with Marcel Kuijsten & Brian McVeigh
2025/02/04
An interview with Julian Jaynes Society Founder and Executive Director Marcel Kuijsten and Julian Jaynes Society Senior Researcher and author Brian J. McVeigh on Julian Jaynes's theory of the origin of consciousness and the bicameral mind.
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
Read Marcel Kuijsten's books on Julian Jaynes's theory:
"Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind: Interviews with Leading Thinkers on Julian Jaynes's Theory"
"Gods, Voices, and the Bicameral Mind: The Theories of Julian Jaynes"
"The Julian Jaynes Collection"
"Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes's Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited"
23. Falling between the Cracks: Julian Jaynes’ Defiance of Scholarly Conventions Challenges Assumptions
2025/01/14
Falling between the Cracks: Julian Jaynes’s Defiance of Scholarly Conventions Challenged Cherished Methodological Assumptions — This Is What Makes Him Hard to Appreciate
By Brian J. McVeigh
Produced by Marcel Kuijsten. Read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
Academics make progress when they are inspired by the cross-pollination of ideas, and most researchers, arguably, utilize a multi-disciplinary approach to some degree, i.e., no piece of research fits perfectly into one scholarly field. Much of the academic landscape can be described as combinatory endeavors — social psychology, psychological anthropology, psychology of religion, neuropsychology, neurotheology, etc., to name just a few. Cross-fertilization is a wonderful and much-needed antidote to specialization, subspecialization, sub-subspecialization, etc. ...
Read the complete text from this episode:
https://www.julianjaynes.org/2022/12/05/falling-between-the-cracks-jayness-defiance-of-scholarly-conventions/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
22. The Myth of “Pure Consciousness”
2024/12/17
The Myth of “Pure Consciousness” - The Belief in a Fundamental Psychic Process Hinders Progress in Psychology
By Brian J. McVeigh
Produced by Marcel Kuijsten. Read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
“If understanding a thing is arriving at a familiarizing metaphor for it, then we can see that there always will be a difficulty in understanding consciousness. For it should be immediately apparent that there is not and cannot be anything in our immediate experience that is like immediate experience itself. There is therefore a sense in which we shall never be able to understand consciousness in the same way that we can understand things that we are conscious of” (Julian Jaynes, 1976, p. 53).
I have often wondered why so many well-credentialed researchers continue to bark up the wrong tree in their quest to understand consciousness. Many reasons could be offered, but in a recent discussion on the “Julian Jaynes — The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” Facebook page someone brought up Jaynes’s aforementioned quote. ...
Read the complete text from this episode:
https://www.julianjaynes.org/2022/10/18/the-myth-of-pure-consciousness/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
21. A Resurgence of Julian Jaynes’ Theory of Consciousness
2024/11/12
A Resurgence of Julian Jaynes’ Theory of Consciousness
By Peter Sellick
Produced by Marcel Kuijsten. Read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
Adam Mars-Jones begins his review of Alvaro Enrigue’s “You Dreamed of Empires” (London Review of Books, Volume 46, Number 10) with the following:
“Culture shock seems too mild a phrase to describe the arrival of Europeans in South and Central America. In his 1976 maverick classic, The Origin of consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (its category speculative neurohistory, at a guess), Julian Jaynes proposes that, at the time Pizarro and his men reached them, the Inca didn’t have full mental autonomy but only ‘protosubjectivity’. They functioned largely by a sort of automatism, acting according to unchanging patterns and ritual clues, able to absorb only slight disruptions to their routines, so that this was less a clash of civilisations than of mental structures.”
This sent me scrambling for my old copy of Jaynes’ monumental book that I read in the late 80s.
Read the complete text from this episode:
https://www.julianjaynes.org/2024/08/16/a-resurgence-of-julian-jaynes-theory-of-consciousness/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
20. Julian Jaynes Is Not for the Intellectually Fainthearted
2024/10/08
Julian Jaynes Is Not for the Intellectually Fainthearted — But Breaking Jaynesian Psychology Down into Four Hypotheses Makes Things Easier
By Brian J. McVeigh
Produced by Marcel Kuijsten. Read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
I first encountered Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind almost 45 years ago. Though the book made sense to me, I could see why people would reject its arguments. Nevertheless I assumed that once carefully explained, people may not agree but would at least be able to discern a certain logic behind Jaynesian psychology. How naïve I was.
Read the complete text from this episode:
https://www.julianjaynes.org/2022/06/07/julian-jaynes-is-not-for-the-intellectually-fainthearted/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
19. The Need to Acknowledge Bicameral Vestiges: Jaynesian Psychology Finds Support not just from the Ancient World
2024/09/10
The Need to Acknowledge Bicameral Vestiges: Jaynesian Psychology Finds Support not just from the Ancient World
By Brian J. McVeigh
Produced by Marcel Kuijsten. Read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
This post is inspired by a recent exchange I had with a commentator who saw little value in relying on biblical accounts as evidence to support Jaynes’s theories because they were “fairytales.” Presumably such a criticism could be extended to other writings that constitute humanity’s extensive religious tradition. It is worth responding to this line of critique because it is not an uncommon reaction from those who find fault with Jaynes (and for what it’s worth, Jaynes did not set out to explain the origins of religion; his research was on the origin of consciousness).
Read the complete text from this episode:
https://www.julianjaynes.org/2022/04/26/the-need-to-acknowledge-bicameral-vestiges/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
18. Disentangling Inner Speech, Self-dialogue, and Auditory Hallucinations: The Mind Is a Machine for Sociopsychological Communication
2024/08/13
Disentangling Inner Speech, Self-dialogue, and Auditory Hallucinations: The Mind Is a Machine for Sociopsychological Communication
By Brian J. McVeigh
Produced by Marcel Kuijsten. Read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
How are inner speech, self-dialogue, auditory imagery, and hallucinations related? And what exactly are hallucinations? Some have suggested that hallucinations are caused by a monitoring defect in inner speech (also termed inner voice, silent speech, subvocal speech, covert speech, self talk, internal monologue, verbal thought, etc.) (Fernyhough, The Voices Within, 2016). Such a claim, however, ignores the overwhelming evidence concerning hallucinations before about 1000 BCE. Any theoretical linkage must take into account one crucial datum: hallucinations were central to normal sociopsychological functioning. Hallucinations, which were ubiquitous in the ancient world, were a mechanism for social control (until about the first millennium BCE). The “monitoring defect” hypothesis confuses matters: Rather than hallucinations resulting from a problem with inner speech, inner speech is a type of watered-down hallucination. This is why, arguably, for some an inner voice possesses agent-like properties or is accompanied by a felt presence, suggesting vestigial bicameral mentality.
Read the complete text from this episode:
https://www.julianjaynes.org/2021/10/26/disentangling-inner-speech-self-dialogue-and-auditory-hallucinations/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
17. Consciousness, Cognition, and Free Will: A Jaynesian Perspective
2024/07/30
Consciousness, Cognition, and Free Will: A Jaynesian Perspective
An Interview by Vinay Kolhatkar with Julian Jaynes Society Founder and Executive Director Marcel Kuijsten.
Marcel Kuijsten discusses the uniquely human consciousness from a Jaynesian perspective with the show's host, Vinay Kolhatkar. Also covered are free will and cognition, the cognitive explosion of Ancient Greece, pre-conceptual ancient cultures prevalent today, the human disposition to obeying authorial voices, and the enormous canvas for future research.
Courtesy of the Savvy Street Show (https://www.thesavvystreet.com/).
Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/tAE5WL5XvDQ
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at www.julianjaynes.org.
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