Jaynes
Article
Jaynes is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between May 25, 2022 and May 30, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “Again, read your Jaynes”; “If, as Jaynes hypothesizes, the ancients’ relationship to their deities was similar to a modern DID patient’s relationship to their alters”; “consider reading my review of Jaynes’ Origin Of Consciousness”. It most often appears alongside Foulks, Internal Family Systems, 21st century scientific psychiatry.
Metadata
- Category: People
- Mention count: 4
- Issue count: 4
- First seen: May 25, 2022
- Last seen: May 30, 2023
Appears In
- In Partial, Grudging Defense Of The Hearing Voices Movement
- Contra Resident Contrarian On Unfalsifiable Internal States
- Book Review: The Arctic Hysterias
- Are Woo Non-Responders Defective?
Related Pages
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- Foulks (2 shared issues)
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- Internal Family Systems (2 shared issues)
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- 21st century scientific psychiatry (1 shared issues)
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- advanced meditators (1 shared issues)
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- Aella (1 shared issues)
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- Alaska (1 shared issues)
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- Alaskan government (1 shared issues)
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- Alexander Technique (1 shared issues)
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- American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting (1 shared issues)
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- Andamanese (1 shared issues)
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- Arctic hysteria (1 shared issues)
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- astral projection (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
Is all of this mealy-mouthed and post-modernist and denying the existence of ground-level truth? Sort of, but “your subjective experience of your psyche is culturally relative” is a weaker and more defensible claim than “reality is culturally relative”, and one with a lot of support - see eg Julian Jaynes and Ethan Watters for more.
Inline links: Julian Jaynes, Ethan Watters
This is also how I feel about hearing voices. Is hearing voices socially contagious? My guess is slightly. The DSM says that you can’t diagnose a psychotic disorder if someone’s in a cultural context when they’re expected and encouraged to hear voices - which sure does sound like the experts think cultural context can affect whether you hear voices or not. Born again Christians are constantly having what would normally get classified as psychotic experiences - I have asked a bunch of evangelicals who say “God told me to X” whether they actually heard God in a, you know, hearing God type way, and they usually say yes. Again, read your Jaynes. It feels prudent not to tell everyone that hearing voices is totally normal and cool.
Inline links: read your Jaynes
I don’t recommend having multiple personalities, and I’m careful to stay away from this sort of thing myself. All of the people who take psychotherapy seriously say it’s important to have a well-integrated personality, and splitting off parts of your personality sounds like the opposite of that. If, as Jaynes hypothesizes, the ancients’ relationship to their deities was similar to a modern DID patient’s relationship to their alters, then the most important commandment of my ancestral religion is to STOP DOING THAT, and although I am not a religious Jew I am at least willing to listen to that particular Chesterton’s Fence.
(if you haven’t already, consider reading my review of Jaynes’ Origin Of Consciousness or CubeFlipper’s review of Sorenson’s Preconquest Consciousness)
Inline links: Origin Of Consciousness, Preconquest Consciousness
The cross-cultural psychologists sometimes claim that other cultures verbalize their emotions less than Westerners (and correspondingly have more psychosomatic complaints), whereas Westerners verbalize them more and have depression. Cf. Jaynes, Watters, Foulks.