Gee’s Reviews > The "Other" Psychology of Julian Jaynes: Ancient Languages, Sacred Visions, and Forgotten Mentalities > Status Update

three thousand years ago massive sociocultural changes redesigned our socioneurology, replacing voice-volitions with another form of hallucinatory experience, i.e. the quasi-perceptions of mental imagery (conscious interiority). Even patterns of inhibition and disinhibition are matters of culture and socialization

functional neuroimaging findings seem to confirm the theory that the right middle temporal gyrus is the source of hallucinations in at least some schizophrenic patients

human brain asymmetry appears to be a recent evolutionary attempt at “de-duplication” of function. This allows the utilization of all 1300 cc of the brain mass, instead of just half that much, to construct our spatiotemporal worlds

pre-conscious times, individuals lacked a sense of reflexivity. Since no introspecting “I” could scan a “me” or mental objects in a psychoscape, a sense of selfhood generated by internal “mirror imaging” would be impossible. Thus, individuals would not be wracked by existentialist sentiments or spiritual alienation

Jaynes’s thinking is premised on the notion that social transformations—expanding demographics, more complex political economic systems, mass migration, and technological innovations such as writing and bronze- and ironworking—led to changes in cognition

the picto- and ideographic nature of Chinese we can easily discern (perhaps more readily than alphabetic languages) the traces of the trajectory of psychohistorical scaffolding. In other words, Chinese logographs (or characters or logograms) are excellent examples of linguo-conceptual remnants

the neurological model for the bicameral (“two-chambered”) mind. Prior to the development of consciousness, a dominant “god” side (now partially vestigial linguistic areas in the right hemisphere) spoke to a “mortal” side (linguistic areas in the left hemisphere). Hypnosis, spirit possession, imaginary companions, and glossolalia are vestiges of bicamerality.