Rating: 
Summary: An extraordinary, challenging, enduring idea.
Review: An extraordinary, challenging, enduring idea lies at the core of this book: an idea that encompasses and seeks to explicate the birth of consciousness, and thus the origin and evolution of civilisations. An evolution which, from this book's remarkable perspective, is still taking place now, and whose trail the reader can trace as clearly through recent centuries as the author delineates it in ancient cultures. The trail of consciousness.
Jaynes is quite possibly a maverick. He is, however, intellectually rigorous, painstaking, and honest. There is no sense that the reader is being lured into crackpot theory - this is no von Daniken potboiler. It's no easy read, believe me: and yet, Jaynes always provides the reader with clear, sure ground on which to proceed.
This book is, and should be regarded as, one of the 20th century's major works of psycho-archaeology, a true landmark and turning point in how humans understand themselves. It throws down many challenges to our elemental cultural and psychological assumptions. And it confronts, as bravely and as stimulatingly as any single thesis since Freud's idea of the subconscious, the biggest questions of all in our secular epoch: who are we? And what is our consciousness?
Questions that, as you will find out in discussion having read it, most people would rather leave well alone.
Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing but hard to prove idea
Review: Explores the notion that human consciousness is a recent development, from an earlier stage when "bicameral" people acted on the instructions from hallucinated voices. These voices are the origin of gods, and were created by the right hemisphere of the brain which "told" the left hemisphere what to do.Difficult to see how this thought can be developed much beyond its presentation in the book, as the archaeological record is unlikely to contribute much more. I's also hard to know how selective the author is being with his sources. A few points strike me: one is that bicameralism--hearing voices-when it appears today normally presents itself as a debilitating mental illness, rather than a valid alternative mental structure. Secondly, although jaynes rightly points out that we carry out many actions unconsciously, this unconscious master is often preceded by a period of conscious control and learning. Finally, that the human love affair with consciousness--freely attributing it to trees, cars, weather, animals, cuddly toys appears too deep=seated to be of recent origin. Jaynes does succeed in shaking the assumption that consciousness is a temporal and cultural constant. And he does leave you wondering why it was that all the previously loquacious gods, from Yahweh downwards, suddenly shut up and never speak again...
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing
Review: First of all the book was copyrighted in 1976 and apparently first published in 1982. That is eons ago in the science of cognition and brain imaging. So I would like to know how the past 2 and a half decades have affected the theories in this book. I also note that the author taught at Princeton University (he died in 1997), so his theories ought to have received a hearing. But apparently the follow-up book he intended was never published, and he was considered somewhat of a maverick, if not quite a crackpot. This website offers some perspective: http://www.julianjaynes.org His theory, in simplest terms, is that until about 3000 years ago, all of humankind basically heard voices. The voices were actually coming from the other side of the brain, but because the two hemispheres were not in communication the way they are now for most of us, the voices seemed to be coming from outside. The seemed, in fact, to be coming from God or the gods. So far, so good. That is certainly imaginable to most of us, because we know that schizophrenics and some others still hear voices in apparently this manner today. But he also posits that many sophisticated civilizations were created by men and women who were all directed by these godlike voices. What is not very clearly explained (a serious gap in his theory) is how all the voices in these "bicameral civilizations," as he calls them, worked in harmony. But his theory is that ancient Greece, Babylon, Assyria, Egpyt, and less ancient but similar Mayan and Incan kingdoms were all built by people who were not "conscious" in our modern sense. When one hears voices, whether then or now, the voices tend to be commanding and directive, and the need to obey them compelling. Free will is not possible. And so the people who built the pyramids were not self-aware as we are, did not feel self-pity, did not make plans, but simply obeyed the voices, which somehow were in agreement that the thing must be done. Again, when he mentions that hypnosis may be triggering a reversion to a similar kind of consciousness, in which a voice, somehow channeled through the sub-conscious rather than the reasoning part of the brain, has an unusual compelling quality to it, and enables a person to do things that in their conscious analytic mind they are unable to do, we feel that we do have a glimmer that such a state of being is possible. Of course, he connects these ideas to schizophrenia, seeing that as a throw-back to an earlier kind of mind-state, though now socially unacceptable and also unacceptable to its victim, who retains a remembrance of what it was to have control of his or her own mind. He also sees prophets as remnants of the older mind, still able to hear the voices after most people had lost the ability. And he sees idol worship and modern religious behavior as both signs of a longing for the lost certainty and simplicity of a world in which decisions didn't have to be made, and all were of one accord as to what the gods wanted done. I don't see much evidence for the pastoral simplicity which he thinks the bicameral mind lived in. But I do think that it is possible that not only ancient people but even many modern people have mind-experiences that are very different from our individualistic, introspective, self-determined ideas. In fact, I think relatively few human beings question and ponder and change belief systems as we might. The feeling of being adrift in a world that we can't understand, struggling with questions about everything, is far from universal, I think. It is pertinent that he calls the shift from bicameral (two houses) to modern consciousness a "breakdown." He sees the shift as happening in response to crises and threats in the environment, but he doesn't present it as necessarily positive, and certainly not as pleasant to those living in its shadow. He sees the cries of the Jews and many other people for God to "rend the heavens and come down," to "not forsake them," as cried from people who no longer hear the "voices" that seemed to be the gods, and who desperately miss them. In view of individuals such as Mother Teresa, who at one point had a clear inner sense of being directed by God (not necessarily actual auditory voices) and then lost that sense of presence and had to walk blindly thereafter (or silently would be a better metaphor), perhaps we would agree that the experience of the gods or God going silent not only happened at large in human history but is often recapitulated in individuals' personal history as well. If Jaynes is on to something (and I think he is, though I think he may have pushed his "theory of everything" too far and lost scientific credibility), his theory does help us understand why there is a widespread belief that in Biblical times, God interacted with people in a very different way than He does now. The Bible, and other holy books as well, are remnants of a time when human beings own inner sense of right and wrong, clean and unclean, enemy and neighbor, were experienced as coming from outside of them, from disembodied voices that commanded great power. As the mind (or brain) developed, this split healed (or this mind broke down?) and this knowing become a still small voice in many people, and in others a resounding silence. The question remains: should we take the reductionist view, and look at all religious ideas as merely misunderstandings based on schizophrenic-like delusions and hallucinations? Or should we take the view that God, who in times past spoke to us in fire and plague and audible voices (and later in dreams and visions) has now become one with humanity and speaks to us in the silence of our own hearts? A fascinating book, raising as many questions as it answers, but well worth the reading.
Rating:
Summary: Readable, Fun, Possibly Fluffy
Review: I bought and devoured this book years ago in hardcover (splurge) and it sticks with me still. I am not sure what I think of the theories, and their validity (see other reviews), but it is a fun and readable book on the subject, and it makes you think. It is like poetry in that regard, you might say. I wish there were more books like this one; interesting and captivating treatises on serious, even difficult, subjects. How about one on calculus?
Rating:
Summary: breathtaking
Review: I have just recently re-read Jaynes' book after reading it when it was first published. Though one's reading interests tend to change wildly over so long a period, I was surprised to find that the thesis of the book is still as compelling to me now as it was decades ago. This is an astonishingly creative, cross-disciplinary tour-de-force and the best book of its type that I have ever read. The book is basically an elegant and meticulously detailed theory about the historical appearance in humans of what we call consciousness. The tough sledding referred to by many of the other reviewers, I think, is in his explication of what precisely consciousness IS, and how that differs from our common misconceptions about it. This part, admittedly, is no page- turner: I had to stop and think frequently just to make sense of what he was saying and trying to relate that to my own experience. But the definitional foundation pays off as Jaynes places the origin of human consciousness into the historical timeline, and starts applying it to the ancient literature of the Old Testament and the Iliad, and to several curiosities in idols observed throughout the prehistoric world. This is the portion of the book that I found breathtaking. In particular, reading the Old Testament has a resonance for me that it never had before. As a modern skeptic, many of these stories were difficult for me to think about: there seemed to be no middle ground between thinking of the stories as cultural fabrications or else having to confront the odd hypothesis that they are records of a completely implausible reality. Now the stories are revealing in ways that I never would have imagined. I do wonder if the intervening years have been kind to Jaynes' suppositions on the mechanics of the mind - especially his reliance on the (historically recent) emergence of bicamerality. If he is ultimately proved wrong in this respect, I think it doesn't detract at all from his central intellectual achievement. Because if the ultimate test for any theory is that it should explain the most phenomena in the simplest way, Jaynes' theory is a towering one. By simply asking us to accept a few counter-intuitive principles on the nature of our own minds, he provides a beautifully simply paradigm for some of the most intriguing oddities that hover around the dawn of our literature, religions, and cultural historical record.
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Summary: Some pretty cool directions for studying the mind
Review: I like this book because it's a great introduction for changing the way you look at things. I don't personally think it's completely accurate, but it raises a lot of compelling points for further research. His essential premise, as I see it, is that not all humans have the same type of consciousness. He tries to go in and pin down specific neurophysiological bases for this, namely right/left brain hemispheric connectivity. And he tries to revisit history with an eye towards finding evidence of these differences.
I think Jaynes' theories take on a lot more weight and credibility if you combine them with Jung's ideas on complexes and archetypal possession, and also James Hillman's thoughts on the polytheistic mind. Basically, Jung says that the ego (Jaynes' "analog 'I'") is one complex among many possible ones in the mind. At points of stress, or else through enculturation, other complexes or "deities" can gain control over the person. Erich Von Neumann also goes into this a bit more in his "Origins and History of Consciousness." According to this view, the change that took place in culture was not a "breakdown of the bicameral (two-house) mind" but was the ascendancy of a ego-centric monotheistic model over the mind, over a multi-valent polytheistic one.
As for the actual book itself - ignoring a second the ideas in it - can be a little boring and slow, but it's still worth reading if you're interested in the subject.
Rating: 
Summary: very though provoking and perhaps controversial
Review: I liked the book's first part best where Jaynes describes self consciousness in very profound terms; he sees metaphors that allow us to comprehend new concepts in terms of more familiar ones at its core (it's an interesting conclusion that the intellectual climate of different ages therefore also led to different views on consciousness itself, e.g. involving steam engines and then computers); because of metaphors Jaynes concludes that language must precede consciousness; hence he sets out to identify a period in fairly recent human history where consciousness set in; from here on the book uses literature study and text analysis as its main tools for argumentation (showing e.g. how the actions and views of heros in older and more recent parts of the Illiad and Old Testament evolved), with some support coming from archeology as well; I don't find this totally convincing, for literature is an art form that obeys many considerations, verbatim recounting of events being only one; nevertheless it's very impressive how bold a theory Janyes ventures here, and from how many sources he can draw; his main argument says that unconscious men strictly obeyed auditory commands that emerged from their (now partly passive) right brain hemispheres and that were perceived as voices from gods (this was e.g. necessary to sustain some tedious tasks in growing societies); around the fall of the Minoan civilization and the rise of Assyria (around 1000 BC, in part due to environmental catastrophe) this rigid scheme could cope no longer and had to give way (how ?) to civilizations of conscious men; Jaynes notes that some remnants of the old ways still remain e.g. in religious beliefs or in schizophrenia, which originally triggered the author's professional interest
Rating:
Summary: Probably wrong, but thought-provoking
Review: I read this book about 20 years ago, and it still stands out in my mind as a very interesting theory. I initially believed it, but then developed doubts.
It would be very hard to find a clear test of the theory, but some of my suspicions are based on theories of why humans evolved intelligence. The arguments in Geoffrey Miller's The Mating Mind suggest pressures that would have caused consciousness to be used as soon as the brain developed the capacity for it. But Jaynes' theory seems to require that genes needed to support consciousness spread around the world without being used for that purpose.
What I like most about the book is the way it shakes up the common assumption that we can understand the mind by a combination of introspection and casually observing people around us (i.e. by folk psychology). Jaynes doesn't do this as well as Dennett in Consciousness Explained, but he comes close.
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Summary: One of those extreme possiblities
Review: Julian Jaynes has some interesting propositions for the development of human consciousness and human civilizations. He proposes that for earliest humanity, thought was perceived as external "voices" due to a scrambling of communication signals in the brain. He explores the implications this would have had for beliefs about self-awareness, group identities, group interaction, religious beliefs and customs, etc. The last section of the book tries to find 'vestiges' of these voices in modern psychology/society - the arts, schizophrenia, etc.
Keep in mind that Jaynes is writing about extreme possibilities, so it's worth reading this with a shaker of salt. I still enjoyed the book, and I'd recommend it to others with a caution (fr. Monty Python's Flying Circus): 'And now for something completely different!'
Rating: 
Summary: See below for solution
Review: The speculation started in this book are all neatly solved in "When the Severed Earth From Sky".
Read the aformentioned book and compare the conclusions and reseach methodology. There is no argument, although Jaynes makes for interesting reading he is wrong.
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