Julian Jaynes citations

Julian Jaynes est un psychologue américain. Il est surtout connu pour sa théorie de la bicaméralité, présentée dans son livre La naissance de la conscience dans l'effondrement de l'esprit [bicaméral]. Cette théorie affirme que l'esprit humain était autrefois constitué de deux parties, une qui « parlait » et formulait la décision à prendre dans les situations de stress, l'autre qui écoutait et obéissait. Aucune de ces deux parties n'étaient véritablement conscientes au sens où on l'entend aujourd'hui, et la conscience serait apparue progressivement, au fur et à mesure que l'esprit bicaméral, comme il nomme cet état, disparaissait.

Il ne s'agit d'ailleurs pas, à proprement parler, d'une disparition mais de la conversion de l'usage de la seconde chambre . Celle-ci a plusieurs fonctions intriquées, en particulier la métis, le dialogue intérieur et donc globalement la conscience subjective.

Cette théorie, comme il l'explique dans la préface de son ouvrage majeur, lui fut en grande partie inspirée par les résultats des premières hémisphérectomies et surtout commissurotomies effectuées dans les années 1950 par le neurophysiologiste américain Roger Sperry afin de traiter des cas d'épilepsie aigüe par voie intrusive. Wikipedia  

✵ 27. février 1920 – 21. novembre 1997
Julian Jaynes: 43   citations 0   J'aime

Julian Jaynes: Citations en anglais

“And in this development lies the origin of civilization.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 6, p. 126
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)
Contexte: The bicameral mind with its controlling gods was evolved as a final stage of the evolution of language. And in this development lies the origin of civilization.

“Behavior now must be changed from within the new consciousness rather than from Mosaic laws carving behavior from without.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book III, Chapter 1, p. 318
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)
Contexte: Behavior now must be changed from within the new consciousness rather than from Mosaic laws carving behavior from without. Sin and desire are now within conscious desire and conscious contrition, rather than in the external behaviors of the decalogue and the penances of temple sacrifice and community punishment. The divine kingdom to be regained is psychological not physical. It is metaphorical not literal. It is "within" not in extenso.

“Reading in the third millennium B.C. may therefore have been a matter of hearing the cuneiform,”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book II, Chapter 2, p. 182
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)
Contexte: Reading in the third millennium B. C. may therefore have been a matter of hearing the cuneiform, that is, hallucinating the speech from looking at its picture symbols, rather than visual reading of syllables in our sense.

“For if consciousness is based on language, then it follows that it is of much more recent origin than has been heretofore supposed. Consciousness come after language! The implications of such a position are extremely serious.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 2, p. 66
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“Our sense of justice depends on our sense of time. Justice is a phenomenon only of consciousness, because time spread out in a spatial succession is its very essence.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book II, Chapter 5, p. 280
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“There is a complete lack of reference to business profits or loss in any of the cuneiform tablets that have been so far translated.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book II, Chapter 3, p. 210 (See also: Karl Polanyi)
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)
Contexte: Such trade was not, however, a true market. There were no prices under the pressures of supply and demand, no buying and selling, and no money. It was trade in the sense of equivalences established by divine decree. There is a complete lack of reference to business profits or loss in any of the cuneiform tablets that have been so far translated.

“Subjective conscious mind is an analog of what is called the real world.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 2, p. 55
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)
Contexte: Subjective conscious mind is an analog of what is called the real world. It is built up with a vocabulary or lexical field whose terms are all metaphors or analogs of behavior in the physical world. Its reality is of the same order as mathematics. It allows us to shortcut behavioral processes and arrive at more adequate decisions. Like mathematics, it is an operator rather than a thing or repository. And it is intimately bound up with volition and decision.

“I shall state my thesis plain. The first poets were gods. Poetry began with the bicameral mind.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book III, Chapter 3, p. 361
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“In a sense, we have become our own gods.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 3, p. 79
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)
Contexte: And when it is suggested that the inward feelings of power or inward monitions or losses of judgement are the germs out of which the divine machinery developed, I return that truth is just the reverse, that the presence of voices which had to be obeyed were the absolute prerequisite to the conscious stage of mind in which it is the self that is responsible and can debate within itself, can order and direct, and that the creation of such a self is the product of culture. In a sense, we have become our own gods.

“The Trojan War was directed by hallucinations. And the soldiers who were so directed were not at all like us. They were noble automatons who knew not what they did.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 3, p. 75
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“It is something of a lovely surprise that the irregular conjugation of our most nondescript verb is thus a record of a time when man had no independent word for 'existence' and could only say that something 'grows' or that it “breathes.””

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 2, p. 51
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)
Contexte: It is not always obvious that metaphor has played this all-important function. But this is because the concrete metaphiers become hidden in phonemic change, leaving the words to exist on their own. Even such an unmetaphorical-sounding word as the verb 'to be' was generated from a metaphor. It comes from the Sanskrit bhu, “to grow, or make grow,” while the English forms 'am' and 'is' have evolved from the same root as the Sanskrit asmi, “to breathe.” It is something of a lovely surprise that the irregular conjugation of our most nondescript verb is thus a record of a time when man had no independent word for 'existence' and could only say that something 'grows' or that it “breathes.”

“We are greatly in need of specific research in this area of schizophrenic experience to help us understand Mesolithic man.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 6, p. 137
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“The changes in the Catholic Church since Vatican II can certainly be scanned in terms of this long retreat from the sacred which has followed the inception of consciousness into the human species.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book III, Chapter 6, p. 439
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“Idolatry is still a socially cohesive force - its original function.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book III, Chapter 1, p. 337
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“The king dead is a living god.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 6, p. 143 ( See also: Rene Girard, and James George Frazer)
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“Memory is the medium of the must-have-been.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 1, p. 30
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“These esoteric poses of philosophy and even the paper theories of behaviorists are mere subterfuges to avoid the material we are talking about.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Introduction, p. 16
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 1, p. 23
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“It is by metaphor that language grows.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 2, p. 49
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“Civilization is the art of living in towns of such size that everyone does not know everyone else.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book II, Chapter 1, p. 149
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“Poetry, from describing external events objectively, is becoming subjectified into a poetry of personal conscious expression.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book II, Chapter 5, p. 274
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“The mind is still haunted with its old unconscious ways; it broods on lost authorities; and the yearning, the deep and hollowing yearning for divine volition and service is with us still.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book II, Chapter 6, p. 313
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“Every god is a jealous god after the breakdown of the bicameral mind.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book III, Chapter 1, p. 336
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“If we would understand the Scientific Revolution correctly, we should always remember that its most powerful impetus was the unremitting search for hidden divinity. As such, it is a direct descendant of the breakdown of the bicameral mind.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book III, Chapter 6, p. 435
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“This breakdown in the bicameral mind in what is called the Intermediate Period is reminiscent at least of those periodic breakdowns of Mayan civilizations when all authority suddenly collapsed, and the population melted back into tribal living in the jungles.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book II, Chapter 2, p. 197
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“We know too much to command ourselves very far.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book III, Chapter 4, p. 402
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“The language of men was involved with only one hemisphere in order to leave the other free for the language of the gods.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 5, p. 103-104
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“The vestiges of the bicameral mind do not exist in any empty psychological space.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book III, Chapter 2, p. 355
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“Indeed, it is sometimes almost as if the problem had to be forgotten to be solved.”

Julian Jaynes livre The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 1, p. 44
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

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