Julian Jaynes Society Discussion Forum: Exploring Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind Theory since 1997

The person I call "Me" in the daytime is not the same person who is "Me" when I am asleep and dreaming. My daytime Me is 60 years old. My dreamtime Me is more like a 3 year old. A 3 year old with attitude. My dreamtime Me enjoys grinding his teeth at night, costing my daytime Me a fortune in dental repair. My daytime Me ordered my dreamtime Me to cease and desist from this nasty habit. Night after night, the 3 year old refused to obey, or would obey after finding loop holes in the order (e.g., touching one tooth to another tooth, instead of all the teeth at the same time.) The message finally got through. I had a dream about road signs on the Freeway. The road signs flew over my head at breakneck speed, with the daytime Me's command barely readable on them. But it was enough. I woke up laughing, relieved that I had finally gotten through to myself. I no longer grind my teeth at night.

So what new actions has your 3 year old with attitude taken? Or has his character toughened and grown up? Or is there now a new dream You, or another one?

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If you look around the table and can't tell who the sucker is, it is most probably you.

Actually, my night time Me is kind of taking over. Every metaphor in the English language captures his attention. Thanks to Dr. Jaynes, I now understand how important language and metaphor is. I understand that linguistic metaphors (the colorful little images that spice up our written and spoken language) are in fact miniature dreams. It's Rush Limbaugh's use of metaphor that makes make him so much more enjoyable to listen to than the guy with the hard facts and statistics. The metaphors that I hear during the day come back in living Technicolor at night. It's no exaggeration to say that we're all (to use a well worn metaphor) in the same boat. Our political life is dominated by three year olds.