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In 1976 a Princeton psychologist without a doctorate published a long argument that the heroes of Homer’s Iliad were not conscious in our sense: they heard the commands of their gods as voices and obeyed them. Julian Jaynes dated the arrival of introspective consciousness to the second millennium BC, only about 3,000 years ago. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind sold out its first printing, was nominated for a National Book Award in 1978 and remains in print. It was the only book he wrote. After his death in 1997 the Julian Jaynes Society gathered his lectures, articles and interviews, and the work of the people who took up his theory. This guide covers his five key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 5 key books · 1976–2022 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Julian Jaynes wrote one book: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976). The four other key books are posthumous volumes edited by Marcel Kuijsten for the Julian Jaynes Society: Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness (2006), The Julian Jaynes Collection (2012), Gods, Voices, and the Bicameral Mind (2016) and Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind (2022). Start with The Origin of Consciousness; the collections only make sense after it.
Where to Start with Julian Jaynes
If you want the theory itself
→ The Origin of Consciousness (1976) — the 1976 book, ideally in an edition with the 1990 afterword.
If you want Jaynes in his own later words
→ The Julian Jaynes Collection (2012) — lectures, articles and a long interview.
If you want to see how others tested the theory
→ Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness (2006) — essays by scholars who took it up.
If you want the debate as conversation
→ Conversations on Consciousness (2022) — interviews with thinkers and with people who hear voices.
5 Julian Jaynes Books, in Order
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Jaynes argues that consciousness, the ability to introspect, is learned through language and metaphor, and that before it people had a “bicameral” mind in which one side of the brain produced voices the other side heard as gods. The book has three parts: the theory and the evidence of the Iliad; the history of Mesopotamia and Greece; and the traces of the old mentality in prophecy, poetry, hypnosis and schizophrenia. It was nominated for the National Book Award in Contemporary Thought in 1978, and the 1990 edition added an afterword answering critics.
Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness
The first book from the Julian Jaynes Society: essays by scholars who revisit his ideas, with a foreword by the neuroscientist Michael A. Persinger. It also reprints some of Jaynes’s own essays, including “Verbal Hallucinations and Preconscious Mentality”. A revised edition appeared in 2025.
The Julian Jaynes Collection
Rare and previously unpublished articles, lectures and interviews by Jaynes, including “Four Hypotheses on the Origin of Mind” and a new 30-page interview. They clarify the theory and extend it to the self, dreams, emotions, art, music and therapy. It is the closest thing to the second book he never finished.
Gods, Voices, and the Bicameral Mind
A second Julian Jaynes Society volume of essays that sets out his account of the mind’s history: the origins of the modern mind, of gods and religion, of mental illness, and the future of consciousness.
Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind
Interviews with scholars, and with people who hear voices, about the questions Jaynes raised: what consciousness is, how it relates to language, where belief in gods came from, and why voices command behaviour.
In What Order to Read Julian Jaynes
Read The Origin of Consciousness first. Everything else on this page explains, defends, tests or extends that one book, and assumes you know its terms: the bicameral mind, the “analog I”, the breakdown. If you can, choose an edition with the 1990 afterword, where Jaynes restates his four hypotheses and answers early critics.
After that, The Julian Jaynes Collection gives you Jaynes himself, in the lectures and interviews of his last twenty years. The three essay and interview volumes are for readers who want to see how psychologists, classicists and voice-hearers have used, or argued with, the theory since his death.
A reading path
1. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)
2. The Julian Jaynes Collection (2012)
3. Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness (2006)
4. Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind (2022)
Other Books by and about Julian Jaynes
Beyond the 5 key books: 3 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Edited during his lifetime
1
1 book · 1973
- 1973Historical Conceptions of Psychologyan academic volume he co-edited with Mary Henle and others; it includes his essay on animate motion in the seventeenth century
Books that apply his theory
2
2 books · 2007–2018
- 2007The Minds of the Biblereads the Hebrew Scriptures as a record of the shift to introspective consciousness; revised and expanded in 2013
- 2018The ‘Other’ Psychology of Julian Jaynesplaces Jaynes in an alternative tradition in psychology and dates the end of hallucinatory religion to the Late Bronze Age collapse
The years · 1920–1997
Quick facts about Julian Jaynes
- Known for
- Arguing that human consciousness is learned through language and is only about 3,000 years old, preceded by a “bicameral” mind that heard its gods as voices
- 1920
- Born in West Newton, Massachusetts
- 1941
- BA in psychology, McGill
- 1997
- Dies in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island
- Born
- 27 February 1920, West Newton, Massachusetts; his father was a Unitarian minister
- Died
- 21 November 1997, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, after a stroke
- Education
- BA, McGill (1941); MA, Yale (1948); PhD, Yale (1977)
- War years
- A conscientious objector, he served about three years in the federal penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
- Worked
- Yale, 1954–1960; Princeton, 1964–1995, where he taught a popular course on consciousness
- Legacy
- The Julian Jaynes Society, founded in 1997 by Marcel Kuijsten
The red mark is 1976: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, his only book.
How Julian Jaynes Writes: One Theory, Built Up in Layers
Jaynes starts by clearing ground. Before he says what consciousness is, he lists what it is not: it is not a copy of experience, it is not needed for learning, speaking or most thinking, and it “is not the same as cognition and should be sharply distinguished from it.” Only then does he offer his own definition: an operation of the mind built on language, and specifically on metaphor.
His evidence is textual and historical more than experimental. He reads the Iliad closely, noting that its heroes act when a god speaks to them rather than after deliberating, and then moves through Neolithic cultures, Mesopotamia and Greece, ending with modern hypnosis, possession and the voices heard in schizophrenia. In the 1990 afterword he separated the argument into four hypotheses that can be judged one at a time.
The prose is unusual for a work of psychology. The book opens with a lyrical passage on “this insubstantial country of the mind”, and he writes in the first person about his own false starts, which is part of why it reached readers far outside academia, from John Updike, who reviewed it in The New Yorker, to the makers of Westworld.
Watch
Julian Jaynes: Consciousness and the Voices of the Mind
The opening of Jaynes’s lecture “Consciousness and the Voices of the Mind” at Tufts University on 14 October 1982, an audio recording released by the Julian Jaynes Society.
Frequently asked questions about Julian Jaynes’s books
How many books has Julian Jaynes written?
One. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976) is the only book he wrote; he never finished a second. He also co-edited an academic volume, Historical Conceptions of Psychology (1973). The other four key books on this page are posthumous volumes edited by Marcel Kuijsten, two of which collect Jaynes’s own essays, lectures and interviews.
What are Julian Jaynes’s books in order?
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976), then the posthumous volumes Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness (2006), The Julian Jaynes Collection (2012), Gods, Voices, and the Bicameral Mind (2016) and Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind (2022).
Where should I start with Julian Jaynes?
With The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Every other book on this page builds on it. Look for the 1990 edition or a later reprint, which includes his afterword.
What is Julian Jaynes’s most famous book?
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976), which is also his only book. It was nominated for the National Book Award in Contemporary Thought in 1978.
What is the bicameral mind?
Jaynes’s name for the mentality he believed came before consciousness. In a bicameral mind, the brain’s right hemisphere produced verbal hallucinations that the left hemisphere heard as the commands of gods, chiefs or ancestors, and people obeyed them without introspecting. He argued that this system broke down under social stress in the second millennium BC, and that consciousness, learned through language, replaced it.
Do scientists accept the bicameral mind theory?
Mostly not, though it has never been simply dismissed. The philosopher Patricia Churchland called the book “fanciful”, the neuroscientist Christof Koch objects that it treats consciousness as cultural rather than biological, and critics point to introspective passages in the Iliad that Jaynes treated as later additions or mistranslations. Richard Dawkins wrote in The God Delusion (2006) that it is “either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between!” Daniel Dennett, who was influenced by it, called it a “marvelous, wacky book” with wild ideas alongside good ones. Researchers on auditory hallucinations and schizophrenia have drawn on it, and the Julian Jaynes Society argues that few critics have engaged with it in depth.
What does Westworld have to do with Julian Jaynes?
The HBO series Westworld borrows his theory to explain the minds of its android hosts, and the finale of the first season (2016) is titled “The Bicameral Mind”. Earlier, David Bowie had “Your bicameral mind / Mind your bicameral” inscribed on the run-out groove of his 1979 single “Boys Keep Swinging”.
Why did Julian Jaynes only write one book?
He never completed a second, though he lectured widely on the theory, giving six major lectures in 1985 and nine in 1986, and wrote a long afterword for the 1990 edition. Much of his later thinking, on dreams, emotions, art, music and the self, survives in articles and lectures gathered in The Julian Jaynes Collection (2012).
Was Julian Jaynes a professor at Princeton?
He worked at Princeton from 1964 to 1995, first as a research associate and from 1966 as a lecturer with the rank of associate professor, and taught a popular course on consciousness there. He had earlier taught at Yale, and he finished his Yale PhD only in 1977, after the book appeared.
Is Julian Jaynes still alive?
No. He died of a stroke on 21 November 1997 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, aged 77. His family had a summer home on the island, and the Julian Jaynes Society was founded the same year.
Footnotes
- Julian Jaynes — Wikipedia
- The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind — Wikipedia
- About Julian Jaynes — Julian Jaynes Society
- The Best Books on Julian Jaynes’s Bicameral Mind Theory — Julian Jaynes Society
- Consciousness Began When the Gods Stopped Speaking — Nautilus, 2015
- Rabbi James Cohn (1952–2018) — Julian Jaynes Society
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“This consciousness that is myself of selves, that is everything, and yet nothing at all — what is it?”
— Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)
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