Zambezia (1980), VIII (ii).STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND*T. BUCHANDepartment of Psychiatry, University of ZimbabweTHE TITLE OF my lecture is taken from Robert Heinlein's award-winningnovel (Heinlein, 1965). The principal character is a human being called Smithwho, having been orphaned in a space-ship disaster, is raised from birth in aMartian society. Returning to earth for the first time in adult life, he finds himselfin a culture which, whilst it is recognizably human, is bewilderingly alien andincomprehensible.A White psychiatrist practising among Black patients in Africa finds himselfin a somewhat similar predicament, but without Smith's capacity for totalcomprehension which he calls 'grokking'. Fortunately many major psychoticillnesses manifest substantially similar clinical features and respond to treatmentin much the same way, but in areas such as neurotic illness and personalitydisorder in which cultural factors are important in causation, the situation is muchmore difficult (Buchan and Chikara, 1980). Some headway can be made byplacing an increased reliance on the perception of the universal non-verbal cues ofemotional state, and on the patient disentangling of the relevant mores. Manyvaluable studies in this kind of transcultural psychiatry have been undertaken byworkers such as Ari Kiev(1972), Swift and Asuni( 1975) and Carothers( 1953),but one often longs for the flashing conceptual insight of a Jung or a Freud toilluminate the way ahead. In this respect, it seems likely that the concept of the'bicameral mind' advanced by Julian Jaynes will prove to be an insight ofconsiderable significance (Jaynes, 1979).THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESSJaynes, who lectures in psychology at Princeton University, has for a long timebeen preoccupied with the nature and development of consciousness. He believesthat many of the conventional concepts of what consciousness is and does aregrossly inadequate. He rejects such ideas that consciousness is a fundamentalproperty of matter, like gravitational attraction, or that it arises when a nervoussystem arrives at a critical degree of complexity. He demonstrates that it is notnecessary for the formation of concepts for thinking, for learning or even forreasoning. He regards as pivotal to the development of consciousness theformation of a metaphor. By metaphor he means he means the use of a term forone thing to describe another because of some similarity between them or in theirrelations to other things, e.g. the leg of a table.Metaphor is therefore the means by which the finite lexicon of language canbe expanded to an almost infinite extentThere are particular kinds of metaphor. For example, a theory is therelationship of a model to the things that the model is supposed to represent As an*An inaugural lecture delivered before the University of Zimbabwe on 10 April 1980.149150 STRANGER IN A STRANGE LANDillustration one may consider Kekule's theory that the six carbon atoms inbenzene are arranged in a ring-like structure. The ring is the model, the theory isthe relationship between the model and the actual benzene molecule which it issupposed to represent A theory can therefore be considered to be a metaphorbetween a model and data. Understanding in science is the feeling of similaritybetween complicated data and a familiar model; put another way, understandingis the find:ng of a familiarizing metaphor.An analog is a special kind of model; unlike a scientific model, which is anexplanatory hypothesis, an analog is generated at every point by the thing ofwhich it is a model; for example, a map is an analog. A map, however, leaves out agreat deal and its relationship to the land it represents is actually a metaphor.By similar argument, the subjective conscious mind is an analog of the realworld, but much of the detail of the real world is omitted and the relationshipbetween the mind and the world is actually a metaphor. In the generation of thismetaphor, consciousness has a number of functions which are set out in Table I:Table ITHE FUNCTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS1. Spatialization: The habit of arranging items in space in orderto think about them, e.g. a 'time scale'.2. Excerption: The abstraction of particular parts of experiencefrom the collection of possible attentions.3. The Analog T: This is a most important feature of our metaphorworld. The analog 'F can move about in imagina-tion making decisions in terms of imagined out-comes.4. Narratization: We tendto see our imaginary selves as the mainfigures in the stories of our lives.5. Conciliation New experiences tend to be fitted in some prev-(or assimilation): iously learned framework and reconciled withprevious experience.The Development of Consciousness Jaynes's basic postulate is that since thedevelopment of social structure depends upon communication between indi-viduals, human cultural development depends upon the evolution of language.Not only the social but also the psychological development of the individual isinextricably intertwined with the development of language. Thus Jaynes arguesthat in historical time, consciousness appears only when the evolution of languagereaches the point of metaphor formation. A rough summary of his time-scale is setout in Table II:T. BUCHAN161Table IIHUMAN CULTURE AND THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGEYears B.C.40000-25 00025 000-15 00010 000-8 00030001 400-1 200CultureCro-Magnon ManTool-making and co-operativehuntingDrawing of animals, superiortools and horn instruments,pottery,, ornaments, spearheadsChange from food-gathering toan agricultural economy bythe domestication of animalsand plantsBeginning of permanent townsOrigin of the bicameral mindLiterate bicameral theocraciesCollapse of the bicameralkingdomsRise of Assyria and thedawn of consciousnessLanguageIntention callsUse of nouns foranimalsUse of names forpeopleAdvent of writtenlanguageThe formation ofmetaphorThe bicameral mind is one having two chambers, and Jaynes uses this termbecause he believes that the two hemispheres of the brain have different functions.Language functions are contained largely in the dominant hemisphere, usuallythe left, whilst the non-dominant hemisphere is the origin of hallucinatory voices.Put baldly in this manner the hypothesis appears quite absurd, but Jaynes is mostpersuasive in his urging of the archaeological evidence in support of his conceptBetween 10000 and 3000 B.c. was the period of Holocene ThermalMaximum when the Earth's climate was a good deal warmer and wetter than it isnow and agricultural communities spread over much of the Near East By 5000B.C., the colonization of the alluvial valleys of the Tigris, the Euphrates and theNile was well under way. The great dynasties of Ur and Egypt were beginning andcities of several thousand inhabitants were not uncommon. The maintenance ofthe social structure, the management of the forces representing the warp and weftof this social fabric, became the function of the bicameral mind.Turning to one of the earliest civilizations, that at Eynan near the sea ofGalilee which dates back to 9000 B.C., one finds towns of about 50 houses with apopulation of at least 200 people. Jaynes suggests that the control of social orderdepended upon the voice of the god-king, which could be hallucinated in hisabsence. Moreover, since the king's voice could be hallucinated during hisabsence it could also be hallucinated after his death. Thus the dead king became aliving god, a stage of evolution which obviously required that the king be namedThis, then, is the origin of the bicameral mind.At Eynan the king's tomb contained two skeletons, one male, one female,152 STRANGER IN A STRANGE LANDsitting propped up on a stone pillow; the tomb was in a pit and the hearth of thehouse was then built over the top. The king's tomb became the god's house and hisvoice remained to guide and advise his people.This became the paradigm for what was to happen throughout the Near Eastfor several millennia. With the development of cities of many thousands came thebuilding of huge monumental god-houses which dominated the other buildings andwere visible for miles around as hallucinogenic aids to the populace. Ur hadenormous ziggurats and Egypt its pyramids, whilst the Hittites in an interestingvariation used a natural mountain shrine.The pattern continued in its original form in Egypt for several millennia, butmore often the king's tomb part of the designation withered away. This occurredas the successor to the king continued to hear the hallucinated voice of hispredecessor and named himself as the dead king's priest or servant. In place of thetomb was simply a temple and in place of the corpse was a statue.Maintenance of contact with the gods was of paramount importance. Notonly did their instructions maintain the social order, but also they could be reliedupon for help when the people faced some novel or crisis situation. Unable toproject the possible consequences of various actions into future time, the peoplerelied upon hallucinatory voices of the gods for instructions to avert disaster. Forthose who were unable to approach the god closely, a smaller and more portableeffigy was useful.The important characteristics of the bicameral kingdoms are summarized inTable III:Table IIICHARACTERISTICS OF BICAMERAL KINGDOMS1. The burial of important dead as if still living; food and attendantswere often buried with them.2. The construction of huge ziggurats and temples.3. The proliferation of human effigies and figurines.The Literate Bicameral Theocracies After the invention of writing, around3000 B.C., the archaeological picture becomes much more detailed and twodivergent trends can be discerned.In Sumer and Akkad all lands were owned by the gods and men were theirslaves; there was a principal god and the king was described as 'the tenant farmerof the god'. The god was a statue, that is, the statue was not of a god but wasthe god; he had his own great house or ziggurat The king served the god and heardhim speak; this is quite clearly stated in contemporary texts. For example, thecylinder B of Gudea, dated about 2100 B.C., refers to 'the seven children of thebrood of Bau that were begotten by the Lord Ningirsu to utter favourabledecisions by the side of the lord Ningirsu'. The ordinary citizen did not hear thevoice of the great god directly; each individual had a minor personal god orgoddess who acted as an intermediary. With the development of writing ( Kramer,j T. BUCHAN 1S31969) the words of a god could be written down, and stone steles bearing such! words were erected; for example a stele could be set up in Ł field to give[ instructions as to how it should be farmed. In this way writing became a newinstrument of civil direction. The use of this instrument probably reached its| zenith with Hammurabi of Babylon who in about 1800 B.C. pulled together most[ of the city states of Mesopotamia into a hegemony under the sway of his godMarduk.I In Egypt, on the other hand, the geographical isolation and the ethnological| homogeneity of its people permitted the survival of the more archaic form of! theocracyŠthe god king. In Egypt the king did not serve the god, he was god.[ Each reigning king became Horus, his deceased father Osiris (Casson, 1969). In1 other isolated parts of the world, bicameral theocracies also developed, but much, later in time. For example, in central America there arose the Olmec civilizationI about 1000 B.C., followed by the Mayan about A.D. 300-900 (Leonard, 1969).'l * In South America the Chavin, Mochica and Chimu civilizations successively| evolved and declined to culminate in the rise of the Inca empire from about A.D.I 1200. The Inca king was divine, a descendant of the sun. After his death his bodyI was mummified and placed in his house which thereafter became a temple;. containing a life-size human effigy made of gold.1 The Collapse of the Bicameral Theocracies The complexities of bicameralIcontrol increase with its success until the civil state reaches a size and degree ofsophistication such that it can no longer be sustained and the bicameral societycollapses.f Examples of this kind of cyclical growth and collapse are numerous; at the/ end ofthe third millennium, all authorityinEgyptbrokedownandonlyafterrnore' than a century of chaos did the Middle Kingdom emerge; a similar breakdownj occurred at Assur in about 1700 B.C. and was followed by nearly two centuries ofr chaos; Mayan civilization collapsed in about A.D. 550 but later revived andf flourished for another 300 years, before collapsing again-Apart from this inherent periodical instability, imposed by the increasingsize and ramification ofthe social system, the limitations ofthe gods were greatlyexacerbated by the advent of writing. Once the god's word was committed to astone stele it lacked the ubiquitous and compelling authority of an auditory. hallucination. Moreover, the instruction could not be varied and at times of crisisI or social chaos the gods could no longer tell the people what to do. The| consequences of this kind of loss of instruction were dramatically illustrated byj the Spanish conquest of Peru (Innes, 1972). On 15 November 1532, FranciscoI Pizzaro, with only 187 men, demolished the Inca empire by capturing the god-| king Atahualpa and massacring his retinue at Cajamarca. With the capture off their god, 35,000 Inca warriors were rendered helpless and the Spaniardsplundered the gold of the empire unhindered Having served his purpose,( Atahualpa was executed.1 In about 1180 B.C. there was a major eruption or series of eruptions oftheI volcano on the island of Thera in the Aegean Sea, about 60 miles north of Crete.The major part ofthe island was suddenly under 1,000 feet of water; the rest of itwas covered with volcanic ash 150 feet deep. A huge tsunami wave, estimated to154 STRANGER IN A STRANGE LANDbe 700 feet high and travelling at 350 miles an hour, devastated the whole Aegeanbasin for miles inland; the events are recorded in legends of the great flood and ofthe lost city of Atlantis. Whole populations became refugees and there were hugewaves of migration and invasion; the Dorian invasions of Greece destroyed theMycenaean Civilization; the Levant was invaded by various tribes whichincluded the Philistines; the Hittite empire collapsed.From this chaos and confusion arose the first great military empire, theAssyrian. The crux of Jaynes' s argument is that at this point in time there was notonly a new method of social control but also a new way of thinking to make itpossible. In short, as bicameral thinking became totally inadequate to deal withdisaster of this scale of magnitude and started to break down, man becameconscious.About 1200 B.C., Tukulti-Ninurta, tyrant of Assyria, had made a stone altarthat was dramatically different from anything which preceded it; the king is shownkneeling and the god's throne is empty. This is in vivid contrast to Hammurabireceiving judgement from Marduk, when god and man stood face to face.In the Assyrian cuneiform remains of this period there are indications that itwas possible for the gods to desert the people; for example, the Babylonian godsforsook their cities, assuring victory for the Assyrian warriors. When the godsvanished, messengers were needed and these were usually depicted as half humanand half bird. However, these messengers might bring signs of the god's anger;such messengers were termed demons and there were wind demons, plaguedemons, etc. As a consequence there developed all kinds of incantations andrituals to protect the people against the demons.Desperate attempts were made to re-establish contact with the now silentgods. Since they had left their homes it was assumed that they had gone to live inthe sky; in response to this the ziggurats now became celestial landing pads andobviously the higher they were the better. For example the ziggurat of NewBabylon built by Nebuchadnezzar(the Tower of Babel) was some 300 feet high.Other methods of attempting to divine the speech of the gods proliferatedthroughout the Assyrian Empire. These are summarized in Table IV:Table IVTYPES OF ASSYRIAN DIVINATION1. Omens: An expression of the tendency to expect B tofollow A invariably if this has occurred once.2. Sortilege: The casting of sticks, bones or stones.3. Augury: The use of the movement of oil on water or thecoiling of smoke to interpret divine intentioaExtispicy is divining from the entrails of sacrificedanimals.Astromancy (or astrology) is divining from thestars.4. Spontaneous Sudden insights into the intentions of the godsdivination: occur to seers and prophets.T. BUCHAN156Apart from the proliferation of astrologers and diviners in the Assyrianempire that is indicative of the breakdown of bicameral thinking, Jaynes findsother historical evidence for his hypothesis. For example, there are importantchanges in the use of Greek words relating to the states of mind between the Iliadand the Odyssey. In the Iliad, which refers to a period of history prior to theDorian invasions, i.e. before about 1200 B.C., the gods intervene directly. Forexample, Athena speaks to Pandarus and persuades him to shoot an arrow atMenelaus which breaks the truce.In the Odyssey, which is a series of epics relating to a later period of history,probably about the ninth century B.C., the gods assume a much more minor role.Seers and omens occur; semi-gods, giants, witches and demons appear, to heraldthe breakdown of the bicameral mind. In their search for ways to re-establishcontacts with the gods, the Greeks consulted oracles. The oracle at Delphiendured the longest but by the first century A.D. it had ceased to exert any realinfluence. During their decline oracles tended to pass through a number of stageswhich are set out in Table V:Table VPHASES OF DECLINE IN ORACLESPhase 1. Locality Oracle:Any supplicant can hear a bi-cameral voice.Only priests or priestesses canhear the oracle.Special induction and long trainingrequired for priests and priestesses.From about the fifth century B.C.the priest needed to become poss-essed by the god and speak with hisvoice.Even more training and moreelaborate induction needed.Phase 5. Interpreted Possessed Auxiliary priests or priestesses re-Oracle: quired to interpret the garbledmessage of the one possessed.Phase 2. Prophet Oracle:Phase 3. Trained Prophet:Phase 4. Possessed Oracle:Phase 6. Erratic oracle:Functioning only rarely.THE BICAMERAL MIND IN AFRICAIn a thoughtful and provocative essay written in 1963, the late John W. Campbell(Campbell, 1963) posed the question as to why there seemed to have been aCurtain of Darkness in Africa which prevented significant acculturation for sixtycenturies; the Portuguese, for example, made little impactSurely the answer must lie at least in the supposition that until comparativelyrecent times, African kingdoms were bicameral in character. There are both156 STRANGER IN A STRANGE LANDarchaeological evidence and oral tradition to suggest that sacred kingship was afeature of the Rozvi kingdom and almost certainly of the Monomotapa whichpreceded it (Tindall, 1968). During the period of Rozvi ascendancy many small,stone-built towns flourished. The collapse of the culture at Zimbabwe may wellhave been the collapse of a bicameral kingdom comparable with that of the Mayain Central America.Lacking the impetus of the Great Flood, the evolution of consciousness inAfrica has been much slower than in Mesopotamia, comparable with that inCentral and South America. However, there does seem to be a point in Africanhistory where there is a dramatic change. This point is the rise of the Zulu empireat the beginning of the last century (Krige, 1936). There is a rapid change from acomparatively peaceful pastoral life to military conquest which surely bearscomparison with the rise of Assyria; the comparison between Tshaka Zulu andAshurbanipal is inescapable, and I would like to venture the hypothesis that thisperiod of history was the beginning of the collapse of the bicameral mind and theemergence of consciousness in Southern Africa.The invading Matabele defeated the Rozvi at the battle of Tabazakamamboin 1834 and there followed a period of considerable social chaos and confusion.This was complicated by the arrival of the White man some twenty years later andthe introduction of writing which, as we have seen, is an important factor in thedecay of bicameral thinking.Moreover, there is important recent historical evidence of a bicameralsystem in decline. In Shona religion the Great Spirit Mwari is the spiritual ownerof the earth and the creator of mankind. His priesthood is composed of men andwomen, believed to be emanations of the Spirit, who act as his mouthpiece. Inrecent historical times their oracular voices could be heard in a cave at Njelele inthe Matopos, which seems to have been very similar to a 'prophet oracle'.In addition to, and separate from, the priesthood of Mwari there are barudzi(tribal spirits) which are linked with each tribe through the Chief. Such spirits mayspeak through the mouth of an appointed tswikiro (medium); for the ordinaryfamily the mudzimu (ancestral spirit) is of paramount importance. The mudzimuis interested in every aspect of daily life and may offer advice or admonition,perhaps in the form of a dream or through a possessed medium. Significantly, themudzimu acts as an intermediary with more important barudzi and hencewith the Great Spirit itself. Mental illness is frequently attributed to an unquietmudzimu which requires appropriate ritual propitiation (Kuper, 1955). Thusthe dead are treated as living and may receive offerings of meat, meal or beer inpropitiation.Medicine men and diviners are both referred to by the title nganga.Their powers are limited by the spirits and their work is largely concerned withindividuals or families. For ordinary diagnosis they use a set of hakata(bones)Ša practice strongly redolent of Assyrian sortilege.SOME THOUGHTS FOR THE FUTUREFor any stranger to Find his way in this strange land of the mind he will needT. BUCHAN 157signposts or he will become irretrievably lost Such conceptual signposts are to befound in unlikely places, such as archaeology, history, philosophy, anthropology,sociology, comparative religion or linguistics. Whilst painstaking and detailedstudies are obviously the proper concern of a Department of Psychiatry (the moreso in Zimbabwe since rapid social change may significantly alter clinicalpresentation), it is clear that highly flexible, imaginative and boldly innovativethinking will also be essential in order to cross the inter-disciplinary boundaries.Such boundaries are as artificial in the constraints which they impose upon theexploration of the human mind as those imposed by political boundaries on theexploration of a geographical region. It is hoped that the Department will attract,accommodate and encourage such free-thinkers, even at the expense of amodicum of iconoclasm.Finally the signposts which I have described also point the way to the futureand since the word inaugural is derived from the same Latin root as augury(augurare: to take omens), it is presumably permissible in an inaugural addressto speculate about the future.Whilst consciousness may be a recent evolutionary acquisition, bicameralthinking is still very much an atavistic presence in the contemporary mind. Onesees in our society considerable striving for the certainties which were formerlyprovided by the voices of the gods. Astromancy is still very much with usŠAdolfHitler believed in it implicitlyŠand other cults have come to the fore withextravagant promises for the amelioration of human misery. Various types ofmeditation, sensitivity training groups, encounter groups, psychoanalysis, Scien-tology, materialism, etc., have all promised answers to the world's uncertaintiesbut are in effect projections of bicameral thinking. On occasion we have evencreated contemporary gods such as Superman, Wonderwoman, or resurrectedold ones such as Isis.Emergent consciousness develops in several dimensions. Obviously there isdevelopment of a political consciousness, but in addition there is the emergence ofa consciousness of God as a righteous and ethical God. Without this conscious-ness Christianity could not have taken root and flourished in this part of Africa inrecent historical times, as indeed it did not at the time of Portuguese influence.Here in Zimbabwe we have a unique opportunity to learn from our comparativelyrecent bicameral pastThe Dorian invasions and the consequent social chaos in Greece werefollowed by the Golden Age of classical Athens which began with Thales about600 B.C. and which still exerts an influence today. We have the resources for acomparable outcome in Zimbabwe; as yet we lack the will. The Presidentrecently made the point that independence is not an event but a process. Helikened this process to the maturing of a personality which is continuous andongoing; one does not arrive at maturity, then sit back to enjoy it (Banana, 1980).If I may pursue this analogy, maturity in a personality is not a graduallycontinuous process, but occurs in steps as various crises in development arereached and crucial decisions taken. In my opinion Zimbabwe has now arrived ata crisis point in development. This crisis point closely resembles that of animmature personality in psychotherapy who has just come to understand how his158 STRANGER IN A STRANGE LANDearly upbringing has shaped his development and contributed to his presentproblems. Such a personality has a choice; he may continue to blame his parentsfor his difficulties, using them as an alibi to avoid responsibility, or he may acceptthe challenge of taking charge of his own development and thus progress to fullmaturity.We, the new Zimbabweans, have a similar choice; we may continue toblame our historical antecedents for our troubles, replacing reconciliation byconfrontation, reconstruction by recrimination, rehabilitation by revenge, or wecan refuse to allow the past to shape the future and take charge of our own destiny.In the new awareness of God, which is a product of our nascentconsciousness, we may yet be able to reverse the process of alienation which inWestern Civilization has separated the rational self from the emotional andspiritual selves in man. 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