Julian Jaynes Society Spring 2022 Newsletter

New Book!
Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind

How old is consciousness? What is the relationship of consciousness and language? What is the origin of god beliefs and religion? Why do people hear voices that command their behavior? These are just a few of the fascinating questions posed by Princeton University psychologist Julian Jaynes’s influential and controversial theory and discussed in this book. A treasure trove of provocative ideas, Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind explains, extends, clarifies, and presents the latest evidence for Jaynes’s theory in a series of highly engaging interviews with both voice-hearers and leading thinkers on the theory.

Included are interviews with:

• Sanne Brederoo, Researcher and healthcare psychologist, the Netherlands
• Elisabeth Bell Carroll, Author and voice hearer
• Edoardo Casiglia, Professor of Medicine, University of Padova, Italy
• Rabbi James Cohn, Author and Biblical and Jaynesian scholar
• Dirk Corstens, Psychiatrist working with voice-hearers, the Netherlands
• Boban Dedovic, Interdisciplinary researcher, Department of Humanities, University of Chicago
• Sandra Escher, Mental health advocate and hearing voices researcher, the Netherlands
• Todd Gibson, Scholar of Tibetan Studies
• John Kihlstrom, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley
• Michel Knols, Voice hearer and counselor, the Netherlands
• Marcel Kuijsten, Founder and Executive Director of the Julian Jaynes Society
• Tanya Luhrmann, Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University
• Brian McVeigh, Anthropologist, mental health counselor, and Jaynesian scholar
• Ted Remington, Professor, speaker, and rhetorician
• Marius Romme, Psychiatrist and founder of the Hearing Voices Movement, the Netherlands
• Bill Rowe, Researcher, speaker, and Jaynesian scholar
• Jan Sleutels, Professor of Philosophy, University of Leiden, the Netherlands
• Iris Sommer, Professor of Psychiatry, University Medical Center Groningen
• Laurence Sugarman, Research Professor & Director, Rochester Institute of Technology

View the full table of contents

Advanced Praise for Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind

“Julian Jaynes was my teacher in the early 1960s. … Much psychological science since then points to the possibility that he was right. Right about consciousness, right about ancient history, right about evolution, right about language, even right about Homer. This volume begins to close the gap, bringing Jaynes’s brilliance to the attention and appreciation of the contemporary public.”
— Martin Seligman, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, and author of The Hope Circuit

“… A marvel of collective scholarship across multiple disciplines. … In this book, you will hear the voices of the most open-minded scholars of our generation.”
— William R. Woodward, Professor Emertius of Psychology, The University of New Hampshire, and author of Hermann Lotze: An Intellectual Biography

“Rich with ideas and fertile speculations, this outstanding collection of expert interviews advances the revolutionary work of the psychologist Julian Jaynes.”
— Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize Laureate for The Making of the Atomic Bomb

“… It is time for a new generation of … deep thinkers at the heart of every discipline to rediscover Julian Jaynes’s tantalizing hypotheses concerning the origin and nature of human consciousness. This collection of interviews … will enable contemporary readers to understand why Jaynes’s style of inquiry remains as captivating and compelling as ever — and as provocative and controversial. Reader: take the plunge, and join the conversation!”
— Christian Y. Dupont, Ph.D., Associate University Librarian for Collections and Burns Librarian, Boston College, and author of Phenomenology in French Philosophy: Early Encounters

“… Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind helps us understand humanity’s development of consciousness over millennia, as well as how we learn it in our first years of life.”
— Loretta Graziano Breuning, Ph.D., author of Habits of a Happy Brain and Status Games

Science makes progress when it differentiates, discriminates, and separates out from the messy stuff we call reality what we can carefully classify, categorize, and singularize. If our taxonomy is not clear knowledge does not advance since the defining qualities of different properties, processes, and behaviors become confused. Consider psychology’s idiom that does not always distinguish between visual perceptual experiences and mental images. The latter can be defined as introspectable, conscious representations of things that are not actually present. … Read more >

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