Below is a sampling of the thousands of books that cite or refer to Julian Jaynes's theory, showing its wide-ranging, ongoing influence — some of them may surprise you. Inclusion in this list does not constitute an endorsement by the Julian Jaynes Society.
"'This one sounds good,' he said, reaching for a copy of Julian Jaynes' 'The Evolution [sic] of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.'"
"This is a uniquely human accomplishment never before known in the realm of nature, therefore, following other scholars (such as Julian Jaynes), Wilber too is convinced that 'the Mesolithic and Neolithic farming consciousness could only have been supported by a linguistically tensed consciousness ...[thus] language became the predominant vehicle of the separate self (and thus culture at large)."
"Julian Jaynes ... suggested ... that these animal paintings weren't really 'art.' Rather, he argued, they might be a mechanical tracing of a vivid mental image projected by the eyes and brain of the draftsman onto the dim cave walls. This type of image — known as eidectic imagery — is present in as many as 1 in 10 present-day children, but hardly ever in the modern adult."
"It may be that only humans possess true reflexive consciousness ... Some feel this reflexive consciousness evolved rather recently in history. This is the theory of Julian Jaynes. While too detailed to describe in this text, his provocative book is worth reading."
"Julian Jaynes in his well-known book ... invented the terms 'metaphrand' (for that which is illuminated) and 'metaphier' (for that which does the illuminating), whilst Lakoff uses the term 'target' and 'source.'"
"Julian Jaynes ... saw this experience of voices, identified with gods or revelatory figures, as defining a whole era of early civilization when the key literature of religious traditions, such as the Iliad for ancient Greeks, the Bible for Jews and Christians, and the Qur'an for Muslims, was written."
"...Jaynes believed that until the times written about in Homer's epic poem the Iliad, human beings did not possess the mental capability to verbalize one's thoughts inwardly, which is a feature of consciousness experienced by individuals today."
"Jaynes interprets Schreber's schizophrenia as the emergence of the 'primitive mental organization' of the 'archaic, bicameral mind,' which is supposedly devoid of awareness of itself as mind."
"But did you ever read Julian Jaynes? ... Oh, I loved him in college! The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind – amazing book."
"The thesis that schizophrenia constitutes a type of regression to a prior evolutionary state that characterized ... human development up until the historical period described in the Iliad has been advanced by Julian Jaynes in his fascinating book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind."
"Jaynes's emphasis on 'narrativity' in consciousness is particularly important, and once again we find Hegel, 170 years earlier, making much the same point."
"Julian Jaynes ... entertains the tantalizing thesis that what we call 'reflective consciousness' might well have been experienced thirty centuries ago as an 'inner voice' rather than as our own."
"In a provocative theory that postulates a neurophysiological basis for religion, Jaynes links modes of human consciousness with forms of culture that have emerged through evolutionary history."
"...Julian Jaynes argues that in the ancient world people did standardly experience their inner speech as alien. In Jaynes's speculation, verbal hallucinations are a vestige of an earlier developmental stage of human consciousness."
"Julian Jaynes writes of the brain 'the earliest writings of men in a language that we really comprehend, when looked at objectively, reveals a very different mentality from our own.'"
"Julian Jaynes ... postulates that the human brain existed in a bicameral mind state within the last few thousand years, in which people were not conscious in the sense with which we are familiar."
"....In contrast to Watkins, Jaynes associates the experience of imagined autonomous others with an early stage in the evolution of consciousness in human beings."
"To have a conscious imaginative representation requires an imagined 'object of perception' to be located somewhere in a 'mind-space' that Julian Jaynes says is the 'first and most primitive aspect of consciousness.'"
"Without language and the memes it makes possible, however, even a human would be left with a simple, nonverbal, perceptual-motor concept of self, and could not achieve elaborate simulations of self in the metaphorical world to which verbal humans are prone (see Jaynes, 1976 ...)."
"Perhaps no work has so eloquently consigned imaginal dialogues to the realm of primitivity as Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind."
"Around this time Bowie was enthusiastically reading Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, a work that posits the essential schizophrenic nature of prehistoric man, and man's religious impulse as a direct result of it."
"According to Jaynes, the authors of the Old Testament and the Epic of Gilgamesh, of the Iliad and the Odyssey, were entirely lacking in what we would call 'self-consciousness.'"
"Jaynes believes that, during the tremendous wars that convulsed the Middle East after 2000 BC, human beings were forced to acquire a new ruthlessness and efficiency in order to survive."
"Julian Jaynes ... postulated that introspected volition — the ability to know that one is controlling one's own destiny — has been a recent addition on the evolutionary scale."
"The most elaborate development of this thesis is offered by research psychologist Julian Jaynes, who recasts the whole of humankind's religious history in terms of the interplay of neurophysiology and culture."
"Jaynes has made several provocative proposals that further Auerbach's idea that a different kind of consciousness from our own is found in Genesisand The Iliad."
"Princeton research psychologist Julian Jaynes presents a compelling thesis in his 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind."
