I always love reading crazy theories and have recently heard about something called Bicameralism. Julian Jaynes wrote about his theory in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

The basic ideas is that ancient humans to an extent functioned as ’schizophrenics’ in that they had frequent auditory hallucinations. They literally heard voices speaking to them and interpreted these as the voices of gods.

Julian uses this explain how language and consciousness developed in humans and why early humans really believed that their gods were speaking to them. It’s a fascinating theory that touches on many interests of mine, ancient history, psychology, evolution of humans.

What’s particularly interesting for readers of this site is that it might help to explain how and why hypnosis works. Maybe we were used to taking ‘commands’ from one half of our brain for many thousands of years before both hemispheres started working together.

It’s also interesting that some areas of the brain that deal with language use also help us to recognise and distinguish rhythm. If you know anything about hypnosis you’ll know that speaking in certain rhythms (and listening to repetitive rhythms) has a hypnotic effect. Tribes in Africa engage in dances to rhythmic music for hours in order to go into a trance, and in the west we even have a whole sub-genre of dance music called Trance. This is the reason why for example Richard Bandler does hypnosis work with a musical backing track.

Read more about Bicameralism at Wikipedia: Bicameralism

and

The Julian Jaynes Society