AEF      The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown
           of the Bicameral Mind

I have just finished reading a Penguin Book written by Julian Jaynes.  It is not an easy read.  The copy I tackled was a Penguin paperback about one and a half inches thick.  The three books, the preface, the introduction, the afterword and Index took up 490 pages.  You also need a good dictionary to hand all the time you are plodding through the tome.  Jaynes also expects the reader to be familiar with some of the early Greek literature such as "The Illiad", and some of the Old Testament writings.

The author appears to be a graduate of Princeton University but seems not to have practiced psychiatry as a medic, although he is well read in that subject, as well as in cranial anatomy.  The topic of the book is how modern man achieved his current level of consciousness.  Jaynes has really done his homework and lays out his thesis in a manner similar to a PhD thesis.  It is my opinion that the book deservers a doctorate.  But who knows, he may already have one.

I'll give a few of the Press Reviews:
Original and striking .... a literally revolutionary theory about the origins and evolutions of consciousness
Professor Ashley Montagu (whoever he is?)

Though he writes with grace and wit, he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor (sic).
The New York Times

When Julian Jaynes .... speculates that until late in the second millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of gods, we are astounded. but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis through all the corroborative evidence.
John Updike in the New Yorker

Truly mind-blowing -- something crazy has happened between the Illiad and the Odyssey -- and we've all been crazy ever since
The Times Educational Supplement Books of the Year

I have taken the view that Jaynes means that prior to the rise of consciousness in the second millennium BC, men were essentially what we would now call 'schizophrenics' who heard voices in their head.  This aspect of the mind changed and men became more like we are today.  I suppose it could be argued that Darwinian evolution was the cause that forced that change on our species.  Critics would argue that evolution takes much longer than the time that Jaynes proposes.  I make no comment.

We know for certain that some of the very ancient aspects of our body occur randomly in modern humans, so this fits Jaynes' theory regarding 'voices in the head'.

I have not found any mention of women.  Perhaps this is because early literature seldom mentions women other than as sexual objects such as that in childbirth, or as menial servants.

Jaynes takes his suppositions into the Old Testament with various quotes from the scriptures.  According to Jaynes, if I understand him correctly, the period of the Old Testament is the period when man moved from his bicameral past into the modern subjectivity and mode of thought and decision-making.  On page 312, Jaynes suggests that by 400BC bicameral prophesy is essentially dead.

It is for the reader to believe or disbelieve what is written.  I am a sceptic, I do neither.  But I do have some criticisms of the style of writing.  Jaynes' wording uses the style of some tub-thumping evangelists; a lot of convoluted and hyperbolic language.  I would have been much happier had he not invented so many new words.  In this area he is a bit like Shakespeare; a few examples: "unshowable" instead of "hidden" ; "errancies"; "inexistence" rather than "non-existence".  There are some words he admits to have invented and defines them at the time.  My problem was that I didn't remember the definitions.  A lot of words he used were found in my dictionary but I would wager that ninety nine per cent of the population in Britain or the USA have never met them; an example being "laicization".  I half worked out its meaning from my existing vocabulary, but I was wrong.

If anyone wishes to assassinate the Pope, send him a copy of this book for Christmas.  It is the best put-down of modern and conventional religion I have met.